KANSAS CITY, MO. - An attorney for Chiefs receiver Dwayne Bowe filed a motion Friday to suppress evidence related to Bowe's arrest in November for allegedly speeding and possessing more than 10 grams of marijuana.

Bowe was pulled over during a traffic stop on Nov. 10 in Riverside. The motion contends the search of his vehicle and person was conducted without a valid warrant, without probable cause and in an unreasonable manner. It also contends Bowe's statements were obtained without police reading him Miranda rights.

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JEFFERSON CITY - Christine McDonald remembers standing in line at food pantries for hours to get food for two or three days.

She had a newborn son, was newly blind and out of work and could have used some help. But because of a drug conviction, she was not eligible for food stamps.

"You couple finding a job with a criminal record, with having no eyeballs, you're going to face some societal barriers," McDonald said. "If I would've killed someone I could've gotten food stamps."

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State Rep. Paul Curtman's attempt to get an additional $7 million added to the state's drug court program was unsuccessful in the Missouri House, but he plans to keep up the effort.

The Missouri House passed its version of the budget without the additional funding that Curtman proposed.

Now the budget has gone to the Senate, where Curtman hopes he can work with senators to put more funding into the system.

State Rep. Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan, plans to help Curtman work with the Senate to get additional drug court funding added to the budget. However, they may not be able to get the full $7 million, but any increase will be better than nothing, Curtman, R-Pacific, said.

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ADRIAN, Mo. - As usual, Gene Halbin rolled a fat one after lunch.

He'd taken a couple of hits when two strangers appeared at the front door. Halbin's place sits way out of town, off the blacktop, down a dirt road, round a bend, over a bridge and deep into some woods in northwestern Bates County.

Good bet they weren't solicitors working the neighborhood.

But they did come with purpose and the first words out of one of their mouths stated it clearly:

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SIKESTON, Mo. -- About 50 people attended the Show-Me Cannabis town hall meeting Tuesday at the Clinton Building in Sikeston to discuss the possibility of legalizing marijuana.

John Payne, executive director of Show-Me Cannabis, said his efforts are not motivated by a desire to legally get high -- he doesn't use cannabis. His motivations include freedom, human-rights issues, meeting medical needs and economic development.

The sale of hemp products is a $500 million-a-year industry in the U.S., according to Payne.

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EAST ST. LOUIS - Federal prosecutors and lawyers for disgraced St. Clair County judge Mike Cook filed a response Wednesday to a federal judge who had rejected an 18-month prison term, but it was not clear whether a new deal had been reached.

The filing is sealed and says only that is is a "response" to U.S. District Judge Joe Billy McDade, who rejected a prior plea deal Feb. 26 as "not sufficient."

One of Cook's lawyers declined to comment Wednesday morning. Prosecutors couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

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Missouri Rep. Stanley Cox, R-Sedalia, recently gave an interview about the proposed revisions to the Missouri criminal code. During this interview, he talked at length about a section of the bill that he saw fit to remove, a section that was intended to revise certain drug offense laws. While I don't necessarily disagree with his stated reason for removing it (the idea being that "controversial" law reform should not be buried in 800-page bills, but instead debated on its own), I think his personal views on the subject have led him to prematurely dismiss these reforms.

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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a potential presidential contender in 2016, told a gathering of Missouri Republicans on Saturday that America's drug laws have gone "overboard" in severity and unfair application, and that it's time to scale back penalties.

"The war on drugs has had a disproportionate effect on people of color," Paul said. "I'm not for legalizing any of this stuff, (but) let's try to make sure it's fair. We've gone overboard on some of this stuff."

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Regarding the letter "View cannabis legalization as a moral issue" (Feb. 14):

I personally do not find anything of value from the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes. Marijuana use is associated with working memory impairment. Researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois did MRI brain scans of young adults who had smoked pot daily in their teens but then abstained for at least two years. The scans showed changes in the areas responsible for working memory, which appeared to shrink and collapse inward compared with the brains of subjects who had not used marijuana. The marijuana users also did worse on memory tests, and the abnormalities in their brain scans were similar to those of people with schizophrenia, the authors concluded.

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In "Back to the future: A wager on weed" (Jan. 29), James E. Fisher correctly urges readers to consider the moral implications of marijuana legalization, but I think his article gives an incomplete picture of the moral considerations at play.

Under cannabis prohibition, around 20,000 people are arrested for possession of cannabis every year in Missouri. These individuals often receive criminal records that impede their ability to go to college, rent an apartment and get a job. I find that to be immoral.

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Back in the '60s when I was a young police officer, one of our duties was to take sick prisoners out of the holdover to the hospital for treatment for withdrawals.

En route to St. Louis City Hospital No. 1, I would ask the prisoner how they got started on heroin, and the stock answer was they started on reefer (marijuana).

America, wake up. This is a dangerous drug and leads to harsher drug use.

Wilbern Grove Oakville

[end]

Regarding President Obama's comments to The New Yorker magazine on the legalization of marijuana, we would like to respond to his characterization of marijuana use, as expressed to his daughters. With all due respect to Mr. Obama's choice of words, a "bad idea" is wearing navy socks with black pants; a "waste of time" is watching a full season of Seinfeld reruns for the sixth time instead of studying for a chemistry final; and "not very healthy" is choosing french fries over mixed vegetables. While Mr. Obama is entitled to share his personal opinions, we feel a responsibility to share scientific facts.

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Missouri voters, not legislature, should make decision on marijuana legalization Dan Viets, chairman of Show-Me Cannabis Regulation, is doing the correct thing taking the issue of re-legalizing the plant cannabis (marijuana) to the voters rather than the legislature.

The Missouri legislature is likely a prohibitionist majority and it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch. Colorado re-legalized cannabis over a year ago and the sky hasn't fallen in.

A sane reason to continue caging responsible adults for using what God says is good on the first page of the Bible doesn't exist.

Stan White is a resident of Dillon, Colo.

[end]

Jeff Mizanskey has sat behind bars for twenty years. His only hope of getting out is clemency from the governor.

On a dark rural highway, a week before Christmas in 1993, two Hispanic males barreled east through Missouri in a 1978 Mercury Cougar. Stashed in the trunk was nearly 100 pounds of marijuana.

"Since I've been here in prison, I've met lots of people in for murder, rape, robberies, all kinds of violent crimes. I've seen a lot of them go home on parole. Don't I ever get a chance?"

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Columbia - A local attorney has created a new proposal for marijuana legalization in Missouri that would take the issue directly to voters, asking them to approve an amendment to the state Constitution and bypassing the state legislature.

Attorney Dan Viets, chairman of Show-Me Cannabis Regulation, has submitted an initiative petition to the Missouri secretary of state's office seeking an amendment to legalize the plant.

"The legislature would repeal it if it were just a statute change," he said.

The proposal seeks to legalize marijuana for those 21 and older while taxing marijuana sales to help fund law enforcement, retirement plans for firefighters and police, education, mental health services, drug treatment, and enforcement of new marijuana regulations.

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CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (AP) - Missouri's park system has bought a Shannon County campground from the federal government that had been forfeited after its former owner was convicted on a drug charge.

Missouri State Parks bought the more than 300acre property known as Camp Zoe at auction for $640,000 plus closing costs. The online auction began last month and ended Friday, said the park system's director, Bill Bryan.

The property had belonged to James Tebeau, who pleaded guilty in June 2012 to one federal count of maintaining drug-involved property. For years, Tebeau had hosted concerts at Camp Zoe, including some that drew about 5,000 fans. The campground was raided during a Halloween 2010 concert that prosecutors said featured up to 200 dealers selling marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine, LSD and other drugs.

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After reading "Going to pot/Experts debate pros, cons of legalizing marijuana" (News-Press, Nov. 10), it seems clear Buchanan County Prosecuting Attorney Dwight Scroggins is picking and choosing "facts" to support his opinions.

The claim that cannabis causes violence has been around since the Reefer Madness days of the 1920s and '30s, but it has been soundly discredited for over 40 years. Studies sometimes show a correlation, but not causation.

When the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970, it also created a commission to study marijuana use in the United States. The commission released its findings in 1972, concluding, "the empirical evidence gathered to date lends no support to the hypothesis that marihuana heightens aggressive tendencies in the user or that its effects significantly increase the likelihood of inciting the user to violence or crime."

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In August, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act, making Illinois the 20th state to legalize marijuana for medical use. Illinois has one of the toughest laws governing this new program. In January, this program will go live after nearly a decade of doctors' and patients' perseverance to bring this law into existence. To be included in the program you will need to have an order from a licensed Illinois doctor, an extensive background check and the qualifying patient or designated caregiver will be issued and possess a valid ID card from the Department of Public Health.

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While reading Howard Weissman's editorial "Legalizing marijuana means children will be targeted" (Nov. 8), I was pleased to see that the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse now agrees that adult cannabis use should not be treated as a criminal matter and that Mr. Weissman acknowledges that no one wants to see more kids using cannabis. However, I strongly dispute Weissman's claim that cannabis prohibition more effectively keeps the substance away from teens than would the legal, regulated model we employ for alcohol and tobacco. In fact, prohibition fails at preventing teens in particular from using marijuana.

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COLUMBIA - About 70 people showed up to Stewart Hall at MU on Thursday to hear two prominent drug law reform advocates recount reasons to legalize drugs, such as marijuana, and how to run a successful campaign in favor of the issue.

Maj. Neill Franklin is a 33-year veteran of the Maryland State Police and the Baltimore Police Department. In the 1980s, he worked as an undercover narcotics officer in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where most of the arrests he made were for non-violent drug crimes, usually related to marijuana, he said.

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