Photo Caption: According to the DEA supply of cocaine nationally has decreased over the past 18 months. Prices have risen by 15 percent per pre gram, making a typical purchase of cocaine well over $130.

Matthew Lindeboom contributed to this story.

"I wouldn't say cocaine is prominent on this campus right now," says an upperclassman from Loyola College who wishes to remain anonymous. "It is in a down period. We need more dealers on this campus. There doesn't seem to be many."

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State, City Health Officials Seek Answers

Women who sell sex for drugs will receive new attention from public health authorities interested in finding ways to curb the spread of HIV.

State and city health officials say they will join forces to explore the links between prostitution, drug addiction and transmission of the virus.

Officials with both agencies said they will hold the first in a series of meetings this month in an effort to tap the expertise of community organizations that have been helping women engaged in prostitution.

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There is a way to stop Baltimore's murder epidemic. Improve Baltimore's schools. Revive Baltimore's neighborhoods. And it doesn't involve more police, higher taxes or longer prison sentences.

Instead, it requires restructuring what is possibly the city's biggest industry.

Legalize heroin and cocaine sales, and you erase the economic force behind Baltimore's heartache.

Would it lead to new addicts? Of course. Would it send a bad message to kids? Yep. Would it cause problems we can't envisage? Probably. And it would be an enormous improvement.

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Two students have been removed from housing following a drug bust, raising questions about the college's policy on entering locked rooms and the process for giving sanctions.

The students, who have identified themselves as Gabe Dinsmoor '10 and Jenn Hennion '11, were caught with marijuana.

"We had marijuana out in the open in multiple bags." Dinsmoor said in a recent interview. "We were weighing out the marijuana to distribute it. ... We were selling it."

Goucher staff entered Dinsmoor's room less than 12 hours after receiving a tip on October 22, The Quindecim has learned. Gail Edmonds, dean of students, said she authorized the room search. When the Goucher staffers arrived at Dinsmoor's room, located in "The T" residence hall, the door was locked. They knocked, and seconds later unlocked the door and entered the room. They found Dinsmoor and Hennion in the middle of weighing marijuana for distribution.

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Women Trade Sex For Drugs, With AIDS The Result

While just a teenager in the 1970s, she danced on The Block, where she snorted cocaine and heroin and sold sex in back rooms. Later, with her addictions firmly rooted, she set out on her own, offering her body on the streets of West Baltimore as a deadly virus was spreading.

The years have worn away at Sharon Williams, whose deeply lined face, reddened eyes and pained expressions tell of poor health, nights in abandoned buildings and customers like the man who kicked her down a flight of stairs, breaking two ribs and puncturing a lung.

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Four students were arrested at Sussex Central High School this week after police officers, with the school's cooperation, put the school day on pause to sweep the campus for illegal drugs. They found some, police said -- thus the charges, and long suspensions.

It's not what parents think they're sending their children off to in the morning, a drug-raid shakedown. "My kids are starting to feel that they are in a jail," one parent wrote on the Delaware Wave's Web site, delawarewave.com, which reported the raid as it happened Friday morning. "I feel there are good intentions in the actions of the administration but they need to pick their battles."

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Resident Life officials responded to a student organization's efforts to lobby Resident Assistants to use discretion in reporting marijuana use in dorms, telling RAs they are barred from deciding whether or not to call police over drug use.

Several RAs in North Campus said they ignored Resident Life's e-mailed warning, which came last week after Students for a Sensible Drug Policy began hand-delivering its letter to RAs last month. The letter urged RAs to consider what they said are unfair consequences students face when police are called to investigate drug use.

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Through all his years in politics, despite the endless obligation to shake hands, smile for the cameras and coax money out of contributors, Sen. John McCain has somehow avoided becoming a complete phony. Annoy Mr. McCain, and you won't have to wait long to find out.

Even a sickly, soft-spoken woman in a wheelchair gets no pass from him. The other day, at a meeting with voters in New Hampshire, Linda Macia mentioned her use of medical marijuana and politely asked his position on permitting it. Barely were the words out of her mouth before Mr. McCain spun on his heel, stalked away and heaped scorn on the idea.

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Student groups on the campus have much to learn from Students for Sensible Drug Policy. The group went the traditional, preferred route of achieving their goals. They set up meetings with Resident Life officials and tried to convince them that penalties brought against students who smoke pot in dorms are out of step with how society treats usage of the drug. But no dice.

In response, the group's leader, junior Anastacia Cosner, stepped up and joined the University Senate. Even though she'd be vastly outnumbered by faculty senators, she realized that joining the university's most powerful policy-making body is the most direct way to effect change.

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In a "last-ditch" effort to get better treatment for students accused of using drugs in dorms, university activists are asking resident assistants not to immediately call police or write students up if they smell or suspect drug use.

The university's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy is asking RAs to use discretion before calling police when they smell marijuana in their halls because of the harsh consequences that come with drug violations. Those punishments include expulsion from housing at the university level, and arrest and automatic loss of state and federal financial aid if the case enters the judicial system.

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Yesterday, The Diamondback reported that Students for Sensible Drug Policy is "asking resident assistants not to immediately call police or write students up if they smell or suspect drug use" ("With no-go on ResLife, SSDP targets RAs," Oct. 4). Varied misconceptions about our motives have been the largest contributors to the hindrance of our progress toward the ultimate goal of more reasonable and fair punishments for students caught with marijuana. I'd like to briefly clarify that the terminology in the article may have suggested a different goal than what we are aiming for.

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D.A.R.E. Honors An Officer, Educator

Officer George Stephens did not like the energy he was getting from the seventh-grade students in his Drug Abuse Resistance Education class at Briggs Chaney Middle School. So the Montgomery County Police veteran stopped his lesson for a dance break.

Suddenly, two dozen students rose from their chairs and slowly started dancing behind their desks. Everyone was soon happily moving and singing a call-and-answer song about D.A.R.E., Stephens included.

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Baltimore City Councilman Jack Young is taking his war against the "war on drugs" one step farther.

On Monday, Young said he will introduce a resolution seeking a hearing - -- with testimony from the Baltimore Police Department and the city Health Department -- to open a dialogue on what he said is a failed strategy against illegal drugs.

"Like I've said before -- what we've done is not working," he said.

"We need to have a dialogue about taking the profit motive out of drug dealing and ending the so-called war on drugs."

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Annapolis Company Will Target DOD Jobs

ARINC Inc., which has spent the past eight decades supplying airlines with communications technology, said yesterday that it plans to also fight "narcoterrorism" - the flow of illegal drugs that finance terrorists - as part of a Department of Defense contract worth up to $15 billion.

The Annapolis company is one of five chosen from a pool of applicants to compete for jobs under the five-year contract, which was awarded by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. That agency supports the U.S. Department of Defense Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office.

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Sitting in his office at the Frederick Rescue Mission on South Street, executive director Arnold Farlow frequently sees drug deals from his window. Drug activity in the neighborhood has increased in the past seven or eight months, he said.

Men live at the mission because drugs have shattered their lives, Farlow said. It's frustrating that they could walk across the street and easily buy more.

The Christian-based rescue mission runs the Beacon House, a three-phase, faith-based drug and alcohol recovery program for men. It also operates a soup kitchen, food pantry and a clothing and furniture recycling service.

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Stacia Cosner, a university senator and head of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, she has spent two years struggling to see marijuana users treated less like violent criminals by the university.

Now, Resident Life's administrators have, perhaps half-heartedly, relented. The department's associate director, Steven Petkas said Resident Life will give more leeway to community directors to decide punishment for students evicted from housing because of drug violations.

The fight's not over, but Cosner feels vindicated.

"They're punished by the school, the state and the county," said Cosner. "If I can take away one of those, or lessen the impact, I've done my part."

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2 Women Get Apologies, Are Awarded $285,000 For Experience During High School Drug Sweep

Three years after they were strip-searched during a drug sweep at Kent County High School, two former students have been awarded $285,000 in damages, plus apologies from school and Sheriff's Department officials.

The American Civil Liberties Union Monday announced the terms of the agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by the students, Heather Gore and Jessica Bedell. They were 15-year-old sophomores when they were searched by a female sheriff's deputy April 16, 2004.

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Red Tape, Doctors Say, Cuts Buprenorphine Prescriptions

Faced with Medicaid's low payments and bureaucratic red tape, some Maryland doctors are reluctant to prescribe buprenorphine for heroin addicts, even though the drug has been promoted as a potential magic bullet in the war against addiction, according to a survey set for release today.

The survey, commissioned by the Center for a Healthy Maryland Inc., found that doctors were not always sufficiently reimbursed for their time and services and that there were other "hassles," including medication preauthorization, a process that in some cases can take 48 hours, and varying and confusing protocols among Medicaid providers.

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The first interim report on Baltimore's efforts to reduce heroin addiction through expanded use of a promising drug shows that the city's strategy is working relatively well, but that results could be even better with broader participation by doctors and hospitals. In a city with such abundant medical talent, that should not be an impediment to helping eliminate a major scourge.

Baltimore's buprenorphine initiative is a worthy effort, led by the city's Health Department, to help addicts by using a synthetic opiate that is an effective antidote to heroin. Buprenorphine is not as habit-forming as methadone and can be managed more privately under medical supervision, through teaching hospitals, community health centers and group practices. The state has also been reaching out to private physicians and training them in prescribing the drug and managing patients who take it.

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Sharfstein Says Progress Made On Bupe Treatment, But Hurdles Still Remain

Baltimore health officials are heralding early successes in their effort to combat heroin addiction with a new drug, but say that the novel program faces several obstacles to better achieve its objectives.

The city's health commissioner, Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, unveiled yesterday his agency's progress report on the Baltimore Buprenorphine Initiative, which has spent more than $900,000 since October to shepherd heroin addicts into drug treatment, find them health insurance and match them with personal physicians.

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