Re "Bad news" (Letters to the editor, Dec. 9):

Switzerland used to have a very serious heroin addiction problem. Now their heroin problem is a small fraction of what it used to be. Did the Swiss government get really tough on drug dealers and addicts? No.

In 1994, Switzerland started an experimental program to sell heroin addicts the drug at very low cost, even giving it to the addicts who couldn't afford it. In 2008, 68 percent of the Swiss voted to make the program permanent. Have Swiss heroin-addiction rates skyrocketed? No, they have fallen dramatically. So has their overall crime rate.

Will we adopt Switzerland's heroin policy? Probably not. Too many people, industries and institutions have a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo of drug prohibition.

Kirk Muse Mesa, Ariz.

[end]

Re "Limited discourse" (News, Nov. 24):

I was disappointed in Dennis Myers' coverage of the Join Together Northern Nevada press conference called by Mayor Bob Cashell to raise awareness for the growing use of heroin among the youth of our area. It seems Myers did not listen to, or read, what was provided to him. It rather appears that Myers is predisposed to challenge anything JTNN supports.

Three years ago, my kids were in college, and I personally came to know six kids who were using heroin. This really scared me. I had absolutely no idea that heroin was in our market and that you could buy it for $10. If I didn't know, then I was sure many other parents didn't either. I wanted to do something, and based on my background, a media campaign made the most sense. I had to figure out how to get this campaign going.

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Re "State of Denial" (Notes from the Neon Babylon, Nov. 24):

"Guidance and clarity" from our legislators? You might as well go sit on Santa's lap and ask for a pony.

Joe Sikorski

Reno

[end]

Re "State of Denial" (Notes from the Neon Babylon, Nov. 24):

Thanks to the News & Review for Bruce Van Dyke's column. Yes, medical cannabis is a no-brainer. Anyone who says cannabis isn't medicine is an intellectual troglodyte.

But worse than our nation's ignorance on cannabis as medicine is our ignorance of the process behind its prohibition.

No science, no facts, truth or even common sense were ever involved in the banning of cannabis. Instead it is a pile of xenophobic, racist newspaper fictions and the manipulations of career prohibition bureaucrat, Harry Anslinger.

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Re "Limited discourse" (News, Nov. 24):

I suffer from a chronic pain disease. The docs have finally settled on methadone to treat my pain. After six-plus years on the same dose, this methadone works about as well as two aspirin. I have tried and now use marijuana to treat my pain, but I am not on the list for medical marijuana. Would you put your name on a list to use a drug still illegal in the United States? A list our police can read? I have to lie to my doctor because he has to give these same police my info if asked.

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Re "Pot. It does an economy good." (View from the Fray, Nov. 11):

The drug war is largely a war on marijuana smokers. In 2009, there were 858,405 marijuana arrests in the United States, almost 90 percent for simple possession. At a time when state and local governments are laying off police, firefighters and teachers, this country continues to spend enormous public resources criminalizing Americans who prefer marijuana to martinis. The end result of this ongoing culture war is not necessarily lower rates of use.

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It's time for this state to join the 21st century. It's time for the state to stop pretending that it's 1939, the age of Reefer Madness. It's time for this state to pull its big dumb head out of its big dumb ostrich hole and establish a sane, civilized, and eventually lucrative system of dispensaries for medical marijauna.

The citizens of Nevada approved the use of medical marijuana many years ago (2000 was the second time the MM initiative was passed, and it did so with 67 percent of the vote). But the legal reality that has evolved in the years after the initiative's passage is a typically murky one: Nevadans with a medical marijuana permit may grow their own pot (7 plants max), but they may not buy it. And no entity is allowed to sell weed to those with permits.

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A Drug Awareness Event Steered Clear Of Health Care Perspectives

It was a familiar scene, a news conference called by a group named Join Together Northern Nevada to raise awareness of the dangers of drug use. This one, in the lobby of Reno City Hall on Nov. 18, dealt with heroin.

In May 2007, it was meth and the release of a video, "Crystal Darkness," which had been re-edited to tailor it to Nevada, something that was happening in many states as part of a national campaign.

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Re "Pot. It does an economy good."

Deidre Pike better get in line; Colorado is going to be the first state to re-legalize cannabis (marijuana) in 2012. The race is on, and if I were a gambling man, I'd bet on Colorado to win by an hour. Really though, good luck, Nevada. California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts and some others have indicated interest in attempting to legalize the relatively safe, God-given plant cannabis in 2012. The competitive American nature in us making it a race seems only natural, and it may end cannabis prohibition that much sooner. The race is on; see you at the finish line.

Stan WhiteDillon, Colo.

[end]

The election was pretty much a disaster. I'm not talking about the donkeys and the elephants (I'm a Green), who are going to gridlock in short order and muck things up.

It is, instead, the failure of Proposition 19 in California that is discouraging.

I don't care about pot. People have been getting high as long as there have been people and will as long as there are. Instead, sadly, we will not look at industrial hemp for another election cycle.

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Douglas County School District officials are urging parents to talk to their children about appropriate ways to express themselves at school in the wake of a drug-related incident at Carson Valley Middle School.

"One thing parents can do is to have talks with their kids," said Superintendent Lisa Noonan. "They are obviously entitled to their opinions, but they have to express them in appropriate ways, so they don't create a bigger disturbance for the school."

On Tuesday, CVMS Principal Robert Been said approximately a dozen freshmen were disciplined, ranging from one-day in-school suspension to five-day out-of-school suspension, for inappropriately expressing opinions on marijuana use.

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Emerald Triangle, California. That's Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties, -where the economy is smokin' hot, thanks to marijuana, the region's top cash crop. It's also an area where Prop 19, a measure to legalize marijuana in the state, failed on Nov. 2. How deliciously twisted is that?

News reports suggest entrepreneurs in California's booming weed economy feared both a potential drop in the price of pot and losing their lifestyle to corporate farming ops. Far better, I guess, to operate an illegal 1,000-acre pot farm in a national forest than sell out to Philip Morris.

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A state senator plans to introduce legislation to allow special pharmacies in Nevada to sell medical marijuana.

Sen. Michael Schneider, D-Las Vegas, said he has spent a year working with doctors and talking to state administrators about how to craft the bill that he will bring to the Legislature in 2011.

Nevada currently has a 9-year-old law that allows people to possess six marijuana plants that can be cultivated for medical use. Schneider, though, said marijuana is difficult to grow, the current law is not very scientific and it sometimes criminalizes people who seek marijuana for medical use.

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A judge has an unusual sentence for a 25-year-old Sacramento man who sold marijuana to a police informant in a casino parking lot at Lake Tahoe.

District Judge Dave Gamble ordered Matthew Palazzolo to write a report on what the judge called the "nonsensical character" of California's medical marijuana law the Gardnerville Record-Courier reported.

Gamble gave Palazzolo 90 days to complete the paper discussing his realization that marijuana led him to use more powerful narcotics.

[end]

District Judge Dave Gamble ordered a 25-year-old drug offender to write a report on what the judge called "the nonsensical character" of California's medical marijuana program.

On Tuesday, Gamble told Matthew Palazzolo to submit a paper within 90 days to him and to his counselor also discussing the defendant's realization that marijuana was a gateway drug that led to use of more powerful narcotics.

Palazzolo pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Uniform Controlled Substances Act. He was arrested at a Stateline casino parking lot in February after he sold a quarter-pound of marijuana to an informant for $1,060.

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The Reed and McQueen football teams again will carry a distinction that makes them different than all others -- they are the only Washoe County football programs to adopt a drug testing program the past two years. And they likely will stand alone again this fall.

Fall football practices started across Northern Nevada last week, and they brought with them the issue of drug testing, which was first introduced in 2008 by McQueen after school board trustees approved a testing program. Screening has since expanded to the Reed football and Damonte Ranch softball programs.

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Veterans Affairs Wisely Relaxes Its Objections to Medical Marijuana Use

A growing number of Americans have embraced the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes as a compassionate way to help those who are suffering from AIDS, cancer and other debilitating diseases. There was evidence of that in January when New Jersey became the 14th state to approve the use of medical marijuana, joining a list that includes Nevada. There was even more evidence that month when an ABC News/Washington Post poll was released showing that 81 percent of Americans support marijuana legalization for medicinal purposes, up from 69 percent in 1997.

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Will Dems' Shift On Medical Marijuana Pave The Way For Legal Pot Dispensaries?

For the first time in Nevada history, a major political party has endorsed the creation of a safe, legal medical marijuana industry -- a move that could ease the suffering of thousands of patients and finally legitimize the state's black market network of pot dispensaries.

In their official party platform, released just days after their late-June convention, delegates with the Nevada Democratic Party for the first time included clear, powerful language endorsing Nevada's emerging medical marijuana industry "as a contributing part of a compassionate, alternative health care in Nevada."

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Re "Drug tests" (Feature story, July 8):

I'd like to thank you for this article. I feel it is an unbiased explanation on what's happening with these legal drugs, and I'd like to thank you for providing factual information as well as opinion. Good article! Keep up the good work.

William Winslow

Paris, Tex.

[end]

Re "Drug tests" (Feature story, July 8):

Well done, sir! I think it's high time that we start engaging our community and society as a whole in conversations like the one you started. While the ultimate backlash for this type of article will likely be ignorance, disgust and disdain for you even writing it, I must make a couple key points beyond the obvious compliments.

First of all, this kind of level-headed, rational, anecdotal evidence is exactly what we need to be doing to dispel the "just say no" rhetoric that all drugs are bad. That level of thinking is nonsense and fails to educate our children, but rather scares them into ascribing to ideals that are solely culturally and financially motivated. Your article did an excellent job at attempting to educate as opposed to vilify, and I think only through this kind of education will we gain the kind of understanding necessary to manageably integrate psychoactive drugs and their use into our lives, homes, and communities. This removes the "forbidden fruit" aspects that shroud drugs in general, and if educated, as opposed to challenged, I think a lot fewer of our youth would turn to habit-forming compounds like Oxycodone, Xanax, ecstasy and methamphetamine.

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