I am writing this letter to ask one question to the readers of The Independent. What would possess a person to do drugs?

I'm sure that this topic may seem trite, but it is a valid one. There can be no situation so bad as to make someone want to to do drugs or to drink themselves into oblivion. It just doesn't make sense. To feel high -- that isn't a very convincing excuse. To relieve stress -- get a massage.

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Law enforcement agencies ought to be quicker than they usually are to admit a mistake. They only invite disrespect when they subject an individual to all the inconvenience of a criminal investigation, find no basis for prosecution and then begrudge the targeted person's attempts to make himself whole.

It has happened at least twice in recent months in connection with drug surveillance at Eppley Airfield. In each case, officers intercepted an individual who was carrying an unusual amount of cash. They seized the cash and interrogated the person.

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Jacob A. King Jr. considers himself a law-abiding citizen. He follows the rules. He respects authority.

So when drug agents seized $7,221 in cash from the Omaha businessman at Eppley Airfield last year, alleging that the money was connected to drug activity, King was confident that his cash would be returned immediately.

"I had done nothing wrong," said the 26-year-old King, who owns a mobile carwash business with his future father-in-law.

It would take 10 months and the help of the American Civil Liberties Union before federal officials would return his cash.

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Two new drug courts in Lancaster County just got a $1 million boost from the federal government.

The programs, which try to stop the spiral of drug-related crime by helping addicts quit, began earlier this year. One court deals with adults, and the other manages juvenile cases.

On Friday, Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey was notified that the U.S. Justice Department awarded the juvenile program $500,000 and the adult program $493,453. The state probation office administers the juvenile court, and Lancaster County administers the adult court.

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Troubled young adults in America are using marijuana much more than they did 10 years ago and are staying away from harder drugs such as crack cocaine and heroin, according to a national study released Friday.

Marijuana use among those in trouble with the law, ages 18 to 20, in Omaha nearly tripled from 1990 to 1996, according to the study. Marijuana use among that population has held steady around 70 percent since 1996. Researchers are calling the results evidence of an ongoing marijuana epidemic among young adults.

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A recent Gallup survey indicated that four in five Americans would forfeit freedoms for security. For more than 200 years, our nation has shed much blood securing these freedoms for its citizens. To now say we will forfeit them for temporary and elusive security is a travesty.

The current president and attorney general are well on the way to granting these citizens their wish. They have restricted your right to counsel, due process and attorney-client privilege and have gutted the Freedom of Information Act under the guise of national security. The attorney general recently announced new broad powers for federal agents, with emphasis on detection and prevention. These new powers allow spying on citizens and their e-mail if "warranted in light of the seriousness of the crime."

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Gov. Mike Johanns said his three-pronged attack in the war on drugs put Nebraska in great shape for upcoming battles.

Speaking from the Western Governor's Association in Boise, Idaho, Johanns told a press conference Tuesday that this year's new programs will make a significant difference in the war against drugs.

Among his proposals passed in the recent Legislature:

$3 million over the next two years to fund early childhood development and education.

$636,326 over the next two years for eight new State Patrol troopers.

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One senator's innovation is a door to horror for another.

Sen. Gene Tyson of Norfolk said the legalization of the production of industrial hemp could tap potential growth and profit for Nebraska farmers.

Sen. Jim Jensen of Omaha said allowing industrial hemp to be grown in Nebraska "is scary, because in fact, kids are going to try this, and eventually try the real stuff and you'll have to call paramedics to revive them."

Somewhere in between there could be a resolution to a bill that would open the Nebraska market to the cultivation of industrial hemp - a plant related to, but without the hallucinogenic properties of, marijuana.

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Villisca, Iowa - A 9-year-old Villisca boy is in protective custody after police arrested him for selling marijuana to three 14-year-olds.

The boy, whose name has not been released because of his age, took the marijuana from his father, said Villisca Police Chief Butch Rulla. The father was not charged with drug possession but could face charges after the Iowa Human Services Department holds a hearing on the case next month, Rulla said.

"I'm hoping we can get some rehabilitation and turn this kid around," Rulla said. "Nobody's talking about throwing away the key."

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In an April 16 story ("Bill Puts Nebraska on Hemp's Side"), State Sen. Ed Schrock stated that Legislative Bill 273 "is mainly sending a message to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration)." Actually, this bill to legalize the growing of marijuana hemp in Nebraska is sending an even louder message to our children. LB 273 is telling Nebraska's young people that marijuana is OK.

The marijuana that is smoked to get high and the marijuana hemp that would be legalized are the same plant, Cannabis sativa. There is no way the human eye can tell the THC content of any Cannabis sativa plant.

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Lincoln - State Sen. Ed Schrock wants Nebraska to become a pioneer in the cultivation of industrial hemp.

Schrock hopes to lead Nebraska into a small group of states putting pressure on the federal government to allow farmers to grow hemp.

Legal to grow until its banning along with marijuana in 1937 and a target in the war on drugs, industrial hemp is a hardy but far less potent relative of marijuana that supporters say would give farmers a profitable alternative to traditional crops.

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(U-WIRE) LINCOLN, Neb. -- How does one go from New England hick to multi-millionaire in a few years? Just ask George Jung, who did it before in real life and on the big screen in the epic true story "Blow," a sizzling rocket of a motion picture about a rags to riches drug king that thrills, captivates and rips the heart out of an audience.

In the movie "Scarface," Al Pacino plays a drug king, too. But before his rise, his boss tells him that in order to survive in the drug business, he must stay low key. He must try not to get it all at once.

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Sometimes the most well-meaning ideas have far worse ramifications. Take the Supreme Court's decision last week that testing post-partum women for drugs without their consent violates their constitution rights. The case involved a mother's constitutional right to privacy versus the right of her unborn child to health and safety, which was jeopardized through the mother's drug abuse.

The ultimate goal of arresting women who tested positive for drugs shortly after giving birth was to get them into drug treatment. The unintended results allegedly were that crack users were choosing not to get prenatal care or deciding to have their babies outside of hospitals, thus depriving their newborns of vital medical services.

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Washington - The 141 Americans pardoned by former President Clinton as he left office included an Omaha man who police say helped organize one of the first crack cocaine rings between Los Angeles and Nebraska.

For Kevin A. Williams, now a youth counselor at a west Omaha group home, Clinton's last-day-in-office pardon provided a surprising end to a legal ordeal that began with a 1990 guilty plea to conspiring to distribute cocaine.

Williams, now 33, admits to selling illegal drugs as a teen-ager and keeping company with drug dealers as a young adult. But he denies participating in the cocaine ring that led to his indictment and prison sentence.

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U.S. vital interests are at stake in South America's violent drug war, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel said Thursday.

Hagel, who has just returned from a tour of battleground bases in Colombia and Ecuador, said narcotics traffickers are a threat to U.S. national security, as well as American economic and societal interests.

"We have a very, very serious problem on our hands," he said in a telephone interview from Washington. "This is at our doorstep. We must help. We've got a big stake here."

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LINCOLN Drugs were a part of Robert Dickerson's life before he landed in a Nebraska prison, and they remained part of his life during his six years in tan prison drab.

Like inmates nationwide, Dickerson found out that prisons are hardly drug-free zones. That goes double in Nebraska.

Systemwide, an average of 7 percent of the state's 3,600 inmates tested positive for drugs in random tests conducted in 2000.

That was nearly twice the nationwide rate of 3.6 percent in 1999, the last year for which national figures were available. Nebraska inmates ranked in the Top 10 "Dirty Urine" list nationally that year.

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Ed Schrock sees nothing wrong with using anhydrous ammonia as fertilizer on his farm near Elm Creek.

What bothers him is when the chemical is used to make methamphetamine, an illegal, synthetic drug.

That's why the state senator wants to have the common farm fertilizer classified as drug paraphernalia in Nebraska.

Schrock has nothing against his agrarian colleagues. He just wants to give prosecutors another tool to use against drug dealers.

An increasing number of methamphetamine labs has been uncovered across Nebraska in recent years.

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LINCOLN - Hemp grew out of the Agriculture Committee Thursday afternoon by a unanimous 7-0 vote.

Under the bill, industrial hemp - argued as a nonhallucinogenic cousin of the drug cannabis sativa - would be grown by licensed farmers under supervision of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the state Department of Agriculture.

Sen. Ed Schrock of Elm Creek introduced LB273 with the hopes of expanding markets for industrial hemp. He said that many other states -- and most other industrial countries, including Canada -- have developed their own markets for hemp, and the United States currently imports some for products ranging from clothes to house-building material.

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It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Nebraska law enforcement officials are turning up more methamphetamine labs after seeing them proliferate in neighboring states for several years.

"It's a consensus of all law enforcement that there's a tremendous meth problem in all of our areas," said Nancy Martinez, state program coordinator for the six-state High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Nebraska is included with the Dakotas, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.

Martinez said HIDTA, which coordinates federal, state and local officers to respond to hazardous meth labs, has recorded 11 meth labs discoveries in January, exceeding a quarter of the total labs found in 2000.

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New York - The new president has a great deal on his mind, added to which is the burden, imposed by past legislation and executive order, to conclude the civil war in Colombia. That isn't the statedreason for our intervention in that part of the world. We're all over the place in order to stop the production and export of drugs, notably cocaine.

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of President Andres Pastrana's desire to bear down on the drug trade, but what the government of Colombia is actually worried about is a civil war. Bogota wants to cut off the cash supply enjoyed by the rebels, who, at the moment, dominate an area in the south of Colombia approximately the size of Switzerland.

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