The time has come to relax our laws on marijuana use and possession.

Admitting one's past use of marijuana is trendy in modern America. It's even a little presidential.

Barack Obama smoked his fair share of cannabis. John Kennedy, Howard Dean and John Kerry all owned up to the dirty deed as well.

But it's more than just politicians. According to a recent article in The New Yorker, 40 million American adults have used pot. That's 40 percent of adults.

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Many States Have Similar Statutes

In January, a batch of marijuana-laced Rice Krispie Treats cost a Tennessee man, William Hoak, $11,506 because his items were not decorated with a Tennessee illegal drug tax stamp.

Illegal drug tax laws are challenged on constitutionality because many people do not understand how an illegal substance can be taxed.

Most states have adopted the illegal drug tax, Arizona being the first in 1983. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer outlined his plan this past month to adopt the illegal drug tax, according to The New York Times. This will make New York the 30th state to acquire the tax.

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Prescription Abuses Probed

Drug Enforcement Administration agents searched a chain of pain management clinics in Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes Tuesday that law enforcement officials and the state's medical board said had been selling prescriptions for addictive opiates.

Federal agents and local law enforcement swarmed over Global Care clinics in Covington and Metairie on Tuesday morning and interviewed the doctor operating a third office for the firm in Harvey. By the afternoon they had collected surrendered licenses for prescribing controlled substances from three doctors, none of whom specializes in pain management, and took boxes and filing cabinets of medical and financial records.

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Release Without Bond at Center of Legal Action

A district judge today will hear a suit filed by City Marshal Nickey Picard that seeks to stop the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office from releasing without bonds those misdemeanor offenders who are charged under state statutes, such as operating while intoxicated and possession of marijuana.

Picard filed the suit after it became clear that the Sheriff's Office would continue its new population management policy despite a recent Louisiana attorney general's opinion that seems to question the practice.

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Re: "Drug conference attendees see bleak picture," Page 1, Dec. 9.

Sunday's article quoted a Florida police official who described his frustration with the "revolving door" of drug arrests.

"We were going to the same houses, arresting the same people, getting the same results," he said. "We cannot arrest our way out of the problem."

He is correct that arrests alone will not reverse the prevalence of illegal drugs. That will happen only when we eliminate the drug marketplaces.

Under the leadership of the late Mayor Louis Tallo and Assistant Chief Kenny Corkern, the city of Hammond in 2002 virtually eliminated the sale of crack cocaine within city limits.

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As one who has written extensively on disparities in the criminal justice system, I am familiar with assorted statistics associated with selective prosecution. On Tuesday, the Justice Policy Institute released a comprehensive study on the issues of race, poverty, unemployment and selective prosecution within the context of the so-called war on drugs.

The report's conclusion was blunt: "The drug war is primarily being waged against African American citizens of our local jurisdictions, despite solid evidence that they are no more likely than their white counterparts to be engaged in drug use or drug delivery behaviors."

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This week, more than 1,000 people will gather for the 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans. There could not be a better venue for us to discuss how the drug war has become a war against black Americans.

Louisiana's rate of incarceration for nonviolent drug-law violations is among the highest in the nation. But all over America, including states like New York, drug-war arrests, convictions and imprisonment have increased dramatically, and are disproportionately targeted against African-Americans, making this a major, though largely unrecognized, civil rights issue.

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Most Policies Don't Work, Speakers Say

A man wearing a pot-leaf emblem sat next to a former judge, not far from a former cop, a short hop from a lawyer.

All were listening intently to the discussion, taking notes and sipping coffee.

Attendees at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in the French Quarter this past week represented the whole spectrum of opinions: crime fighters and former inmates, legalization advocates and opponents, casual users and part-time abusers.

As the conference, which ended Saturday, dissected the country's drug culture, no topic or approach was taboo.

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U.S. Attorney's Office Delivers Hard Sell to Churches, Schools

The roll call kicks off with the bass drum of a funeral dirge.

Slowly, methodically, the names of each young person slain last year creeps across the projection screen. People shift in their seats, swallow lumps in their throats.

Federal prosecutors Richard Rose and Abram McGull II want it that way.

"We are trying to get into one young mind at a time," Rose said.

Their venture, "Street Smarts NOLA" is a progressive new crime prevention program aimed at city teenagers. The program prompts students to think, to react, to question.

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The beating death of hairdresser Robin Malta is a perfect illustration of the folly of our drug laws. Mr. Malta allegedly was killed over a debt, by someone who had no lawful way to collect.

For other kinds of business transactions, we provide a forum for dispute resolution: the civil courts, where a creditor can sue a deadbeat debtor. For drug transactions, that option is not available. Drug debts must be collected privately, and violence is the predictable outcome. If the woman accused in his murder had been able to sue Mr. Malta, he might be alive today.

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BOGALUSA - Officials from a Baton Rouge-based company have been in the city recently, but the DARE funds they are raising may not be getting back to local programs.

Charlie Thames is affiliated with SMG and is based in Baton Rouge. His company is a fund-raising organization and recently had people working in Bogalusa on behalf of DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education).

The only problem is that for every dollar someone "donates" to DARE through Thames' firm, only about a nickel makes it to the organization.

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As a Christian, I strongly disagree with Arden A. Anderson's assertions (column on Marijuana Should Be A Wake-Up Call, Oct. 28), about the relatively safe, God-given plant cannabis (kaneh bosm/marijuana). Cannabis persecution, prohibition and extermination is luciferous and Biblically incorrect to begin with since Christ, God,Our Father, the Ecologician, indicates he created all the seed-bearing plants, saying they are all good, on literally the very first page (see Genesis 1:11-12 and 29-30). The only biblical restriction placed on cannabis is that it is to be accepted with thankfulness (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5).

It's time to stop caging responsible adult humans for using what God says is good.

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

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Local Legal Experts Say Belief Systems Must Be Changed

More than three out of every four inmates entering the state's prisons likely have problems with addiction and yet just one-third of them receive treatment for it.

"Substance abuse, in my opinion, is our No. 1 enemy," said Jimmie LeBlanc, who is heading up the Louisiana Department of Corrections while Secretary Richard Stalder is out on medical leave.

Yet the state, largely because of the public's belief that treatment is expensive, ineffective or unnecessary, has been hesitant to fully fund efforts aimed at addressing addiction, be it inside or outside of prisons. As a result, untreated addictions are helping to fuel a vicious cycle that puts addicts in jail and then returns them to the streets where they in turn commit more crimes - often to fuel or as a direct result of those addictions.

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The Oct. 22 column by Bill Steigerwald regarding the legalization of marijuana has got to be in the top 10 of all-time stupid columns. He cites reports by Jon Gettleman and Ethan Nadlemann who both decry our laws prohibiting the legalization of marijuana. The title of Steigerwald's column is, "Cost of marijuana enforcement and lost taxpayer revenues is $41.8 billion."

Of the $41.8 billion, he cites the prospective taxes on marijuana as being $31.1 billion, inferring that our present cost of enforcement is $10.7 billion.

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ZACHARY - The Zachary Community School Board revised its drug-testing policy for high school student-athletes Thursday and said it will begin random testing immediately.

Board member Hubie Owen said the board has had a drug testing policy since the district's inception, "but we just haven't been enforcing it."

The policy change names Lane Regional Medical Center as the initial testing agency. Lane officials will use a computer to select the seven athletes to be tested by urinalysis each month.

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Unless you have been on vacation or otherwise under a rock, a case that is rocking Black America involves the racist conviction of six black youths, by an all-white jury, to the tune of potential 100-year sentences, while white youths were given the comparative leniency of in-school probation and non-prosecution for committing violent acts. This legal lynching of six young Black students by officials in Jena, La. is not only a continuing manifestation of Southern justice, it is a symptom of a vicious period in American history now in existence emphasizing the use of the law to severely punish Blacks. So, while there are justified mobilizations taking place around the Jena 6 injustice, the heat of the Black community, activists, officials, church leaders, all, should be directed toward the changes in the law that have made these injustices easier to perpetrate by local criminal justice officials.

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American Express commercials used to suggest that membership has its privileges. I guess having an American Express card can prove beneficial, but membership in America's ruling class most definitely has its own set of privileges.

After all, a decent credit rating can warrant a credit card, but only the right connections and political pedigree earns one the privileges of being close to power. Such is the case of Scooter Libby. Libby found himself in a political firestorm and was convicted and sentenced to prison, but now his privilege has earned him a commutation of his 2 1/2-year jail sentence.

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What Do Drugs, Jesus And The White House All Have In Common?

For conspiracy theorists the answer might be mind control. Or for some of the President's critics it could be Bush's alleged cocaine use and pandering to the religious right. But the answer is simply that recent legal decisions involved all three.

The First Amendment came under attack Monday when the Supreme Court - showing its new conservative leanings - ruled on two particular cases: Morse v. Frederick and Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation.

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The U.S. Supreme Court made an important decision Monday that placed tighter control on students' freedom of speech.

The Court ruled, 5-4, that schools can restrict student expression when their messages seem to support illegal drug use. This decision directly stemmed from an incident where a high school student displayed a 14-foot long sign reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" near his high school in 2002.

The student, Joseph Frederick, who was later suspended from the school, displayed his banner outside the high school grounds while the Olympic torch relay passed through Juneau, Alaska, for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

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President Nixon's declaration that drug abuse is "public enemy number one in the United States" in 1971 launched a "war on drugs" that has raged since the war in Vietnam.

Like the war in Vietnam then and in Iraq today, this war has proven to be much more complex than a simple "red versus blue" campaign. The soldiers are sworn law enforcement officers and organized crime members playing a dangerous game of "cops and robbers." The victims are varied, some helpless, destitute, or hardened criminals themselves, but all are civilians.

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