Maryland Del. Dan K. Morhaim on Friday proposed four bills that would radically change the state's approach to dealing with drug problems, in part by removing criminal penalties for low-level possession and adding an emphasis on addiction treatment.

One measure would create "safe spaces" for drug use, with facilities that provide sterile injection equipment, medical care and connections to social services.

Another bill would establish a pilot program to test the effectiveness of treating addicts with the supervised use of free, pharmaceutical-grade opioids, such as heroin and hydromorphone, with the goal of weaning users off their addictions.

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Two Baltimore-area lawmakers plan to introduce legislation in Annapolis that would decriminalize small amounts of all illicit drugs - - from cocaine to crack to heroin - and provide new options for addicts to shoot up safely and seek treatment.

The legislation, sponsors said, would free up police resources and reduce incarceration rates by treating low-level drug users like patients rather than criminals. It would force hospitals to provide on-demand substance abuse treatment in emergency rooms and reduce overdoses and the spread of infectious diseases by creating facilities where addicts can consume drugs safely under medical supervision, they said.

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Nearly 47,000 Americans died from a drug overdose in 2014 - more than from gunshot wounds or car crashes.

In Maryland, the governor's office has defined the problem as an "epidemic ... destroying lives." Indeed, heroin deaths alone have increased by 186 percent from 2010 to 2015 in the state.

Not only are drug-related deaths on the rise, so are the associated harms, including: drug-related crime and violence, the spread of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C and the financial burden for taxpayers who shoulder the costs of health care and criminal justice.

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Thank you for your humane, yet nononsense editorial that describes how law enforcement can work together with addiction treatment centers and programs ("Invitation to recovery," Jan. 27). The practice of inviting people with substance use disorders to come to a police station and get treatment is a cost-effective way to successfully tackle addiction. Lockup is not detox; being incarcerated in a cell does not provide the necessary clinical, therapeutic and spiritual needs that are essential for long-term recovery.

While some naysayers may think such a program is inappropriate for law enforcement, there is a positive history of police departments using unsworn officers or staff to handle these cases. Examples include victim assistance counselors, diversion program staff and others who provide the necessary human services that addicts and their families need to stay sober.

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Mass. Town Shows Promise of Treatment Rather Than Arrest for Drug Users

What if instead of arresting heroin addicts and throwing them in the clink, police offered them a bed in a treatment center where they could begin the long road to recovery as soon as they walked through the door? It's an idea once considered unthinkable by law enforcement officials, who traditionally haven't thought of themselves as social service-providing members of the helping professions. But last year the town of Gloucester, Mass., embarked on an unusual initiative to radically change the model that treats drug addiction as a crime rather than as a chronic disease and public health threat.

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Thirteen years ago, I started a pharmaceutical sales career for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, peddling samples out of my bag near the lush beautiful beaches of Newport and Laguna beaches in California. I threw ornate dinners for local psychiatrists to boost the sales of Effexor XR for depression and anxiety, even though it was clear that the physicians I sold to - the "pain docs"- prescribed Effexor off-label for pain. Almost a decade later, I parked my sporty Infiniti company car in Beverly Hills and traded my $200,000-plus salary, which I was then receiving from a boutique firm called Medicis, for a used epidemiology textbook at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, where I started a Master of Public Health program in 2011. What I did not realize at the time was that my own actions in closing a drug sale, without any bioethical considerations of what I was doing, helped contribute to the over-prescription of powerful psychotropic drugs much like that of OxyContin, a powerful painkiller.

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Assembly Overrides Five of Hogan's Vetoes From 2015

Having a marijuana pipe or rolling papers won't be a crime in Maryland any longer.

The General Assembly, led by Democrats, overturned five of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan's vetoes on Thursday. One result is that a bill making possession of drug paraphernalia a civil offense and setting a fine for smoking marijuana in public will become law.

The state will also receive more tax revenue from online hotel bookings. Police and prosecutors will have to prove cash and other assets are tainted before seizing them from suspects in criminal investigations. And an Annapolis arts center will get $2 million from the state. All of the laws go into effect next month.

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Our View: Change in Methadone Reimbursement Must Be Carefully Managed

As the number of heroin overdose deaths in Maryland continues to rise, advocates for some drug treatment clinics are expressing alarm over a state proposal to change how such facilities are funded.

The changes are intended to encourage clinics that serve recovering addicts to provide more counseling and other services to people trying to kick the habit.

But the treatment centers fear the new rules could put them out of business if they result in substantial cuts in the reimbursement clinics receive for administering the drug methadone, which is used to wean addicts off heroin and other narcotics. The state needs to adopt a balanced approach that keeps as many drug treatment facilities open as possible but also offers clinics and health facilities more incentives to offer a broader range of services.

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It's alarming that those calling for legislation specifically making it illegal to use marijuana behind the wheel don't understand the driver impairment laws already on the books.

Impaired driving, whether from alcohol, marijuana or any other drug, is already illegal. We don't need a separate law to spell it out. Current law states, "A person may not drive or attempt to drive any vehicle while he is so far impaired by any drug, any combination of drugs, or a combination of one or more drugs and alcohol that he cannot drive a vehicle safely."

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As someone who was once the state police commander of nine Maryland law enforcement drug task forces, including the Harford County Drug Task Force of which State's Attorney Joe Cassilly is a benefiting member, I find the recent commentary from him to be disingenuous and somewhat self-serving ("Why are Md. lawmakers itching to fund drug dealers?" Jan. 3).

Mr. Cassilly's office not only benefits from seized assets, but according to his 2015 legislative testimony, he is the architect of Maryland's current civil asset forfeiture law. He has a vested interest in maintaining this problematic policy.

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It is a crime to drink alcohol behind the wheel of a car. It is also a crime to drink alcohol in a public place such as the neighborhood park. I believe the vast majority of Marylanders agree with these two common-sense measures.

It should be a crime to smoke marijuana behind the wheel of a car or to smoke marijuana in public. I am also certain that the vast majority of Marylanders agree with this.

Yet if the legislature overrides the veto of Senate Bill 517 it will not be a crime to smoke marijuana while driving or to smoke marijuana in public.

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As I sat with a client I'll call Grace in Baltimore County District Court in Essex, I watched case after case go before the judge.

It was mostly less serious crimes: theft, possession of paraphernalia, driving without a license and trespassing. But all the cases, except for most of the traffic cases, had elements of mental illness and addiction, like the mother who was experiencing homelessness and hadn't been getting her children to school on a regular basis.

She had prior arrests of possession of a controlled dangerous substance and theft.

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State lawmakers, concerned that street level drug dealers will be unable to replace the heroin, crack cocaine and other poisons that the police seize when they arrest the dealers, will likely vote on the first day of the session on a bill requiring the police to return up to $300 to the dealers.

As absurd as that sentence sounds during the current epidemic of heroin deaths and overdoses, that is exactly what a vote to override Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of Senate Bill 528 changes to the state's forfeiture laws will do.

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After decades of a failed war on drugs, consensus finally seems to be shifting toward a more sensible approach to drugs and addiction, one that uses a public health model as opposed to a criminal justice one.

In October, dozens of the nation's top police chiefs and prosecutors - - including Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis - met in Washington to announce a collective effort to reduce the number of people in prison.

The new coalition, called Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, identified four priorities, including "increasing alternatives to arrest and prosecution, especially mental health and drug treatment."

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Thank you for your front-page article on how the presidential candidates from both major parties are seriously addressing the nationwide epidemic of heroin and opioid addiction ("N.H. heroin crisis puts issue into presidential campaigns," Dec 22). Maryland is not alone in seeing a dramatic increase in drug overdose deaths and hospital emergency room patients.

Our immediate challenge as a state is to support and work for the policy recommendations in Gov. Larry Hogan's task force report, which he released earlier this month. A key strategy for effectively implementing his recommendations is to make sure that all state agencies, especially the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, are working together with the medical, treatment, prevention, faith-based, nonprofit human service providers and the business communities to make sure any new programs and regulations make sense. This means these new initiatives would be evidence-based models for helping people and would be cost-effective.

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Small Town Will Share in Pot Company's Profits

At least two Maryland state universities are jumping at the chance to work with marijuana growers to research the medicinal application and cultivation of cannabis. A tiny Western Maryland town says it would happily accept a 5 percent share of profits from a company that hopes to operate there.

As competition to join Maryland's burgeoning medical marijuana industry intensifies, some out-of-state entrepreneurs are forging partnerships with local institutions even before securing a license to operate.

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After reading "The economics of heroin" (Dec. 20), I was more convinced than ever that the war on drugs has failed miserably.

While it is true that we must do all we can to create employment opportunities in Baltimore and other cities with selfperpetuating pockets of poverty, "jobs" in the drug trade are not the answer. It is obvious that young people with no hope of financial success in minimum wage jobs will turn to the heroin market as a potentially lucrative career and mock those who choose another route.

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Experts Want More Data on Effects of Medical Marijuana

Even though Maryland is following the lead of 23 other states in setting up a medical marijuana industry, the collective experience of those states has translated to relatively little understanding of how the dozens of active substances within the plant affect health.

As a result, Maryland will launch what likely will become a multimillion-dollar industry to make a psychoactive drug more available statewide without the benefit of proven information about the health implications.

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City Police to Offer Aid, Not Arrest, for Low-Level Offenders

The Baltimore Police Department, working with a local nonprofit organization, is planning an experimental program that would divert low-level drug offenders to treatment and support services while allowing them to avoid arrest.

The program, known as Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, is part of a shift in Maryland and across the nation from the arrest-and-convict strategy that has dominated drug policies for a half-century.

"Criminalizing individuals with addiction is not the answer," said Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore's health commissioner, who is working with police on the new program. "We must treat addiction as a disease and not a crime or a moral failing. LEAD is an innovative, evidence-based strategy that diverts people with addiction away from arrest and incarceration and instead gives them the medical treatment they need."

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Another change needed to help lower heroin addiction statistics ("Maryland's addiction problem," Dec. 3) that doesn't get mentioned is changing marijuana from a Schedule I substance alongside heroin to a lower category or removing it altogether. Both Democratic presidential contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton support that change.

How many American citizens were taught heroin is no worse than cannabis (by DARE, the DEA, etc.) only to find themselves suddenly addicted to it?

Stan White, Dillon, Colo.

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