Michael J. Kennedy, who as a criminal lawyer championed lost causes and deeply unpopular defendants - including John Gotti Sr., Huey P. Newton and Timothy Leary - and finally won freedom for Jean S. Harris, the convicted killer of Dr. Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale Diet doctor, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 78.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, which developed while he was being treated for cancer, his wife, Eleanora, said.

A steadfast defender of the underdog and the First Amendment, Mr. Kennedy represented radicals including Rennie Davis, Bernardine Dohrn and Mr. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. His clients also included the Native American protesters at Wounded Knee, S.D., the family of the rogue real estate heir Robert A. Durst; Mr. Leary, the LSD guru; and Mr. Gotti, the mob boss.

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To the Editor:

Re "Drug Deaths Reach White America" (editorial, Jan. 25):

While heroin overdose deaths afflict white neighborhoods as never before, in New York City the worst damage is found in communities that have suffered the longest.

The highest rate of heroin overdose death is Hunts Point/Mott Haven in the Bronx, where the problem is not new. In contrast, a Staten Island community, once untouched by heroin, is second highest. This epidemic is multifaceted, and so must be the response.

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To the Editor:

Your article says the United States has not seen death rates among young white adults so high "since the end of the AIDS epidemic more than two decades ago."

Not only is the AIDS epidemic not over - 50,000 people in the United States are newly infected every year - but the rise in drug abuse is spawning a new generation of H.I.V. infections, most recently in Indiana and Kentucky.

We cannot ignore the spike in deaths from overdoses. But neither can we be blind to the direct correlation between drug abuse and H.I.V.-AIDS.

[continues 74 words]

To the Editor:

The dramatic increase in drug overdose deaths is not new to drug treatment. For several years treatment providers have been racing to save the lives of young Americans addicted to opioids as what started as a surge in prescription drug abuse morphed into a full-blown opioid epidemic.

It is also not news that intensive residential and outpatient treatment services are in short supply, and what resources are available in many parts of the country are often prohibitively expensive for the vulnerable populations who need them the most.

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To the Editor:

Your compelling article "Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Whites" (front page, Jan. 17) ends with this quote: "There are people whose lives are so hard they break." But we know that lives don't break overnight. Most people with substance use disorders started using alcohol or other drugs before the age of 18, when the brain is still developing and teenagers are vulnerable.

Sadly, we need to consider more "upstream" approaches to address the opiate epidemic. We should focus more effort on those who begin to use in their early teens and engage young people in honest conversations about why they are using alcohol and drugs. Then we can help them deal with issues like stress, anxiety or trauma that contribute to their use.

[continues 55 words]

To the Editor:

Re "Mexico's New Blood Politics" (Sunday Review, Jan. 17):

Ioan Grillo's conclusion that the United States (and American taxpayers) "should use its drug-war aid to push harder" for anti-corruption and judicial reforms is off base.

As a political analyst living and working in Mexico for the last three decades, I have watched with horror how the United States-Mexico drug war strategy has led to the explosion of violence and criminal activity here. The deep-rooted complicity between government officials and security forces on the one hand and cartels on the other means that the training, equipment and firepower given in aid and sold to the Mexican government fuel violence on both sides.

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EARLIER this month, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida opened up on a subject he had once chided reporters for asking about: his daughter, Noelle, who, he said, "was addicted to drugs."

In a video released by the campaign, Mr. Bush speaks plainly about his daughter's struggle, her time in jail and drug court, and her recovery. "I can look in people's eyes and I know that they've gone through the same thing that Columba and I have," he said, referring to his wife.

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Mexico City - ON the morning of Jan. 2, a team of hired killers set off for the home of 33-year-old Gisela Mota, who only hours before had been sworn in as the first female mayor of Temixco, a sleepy spa town an hour from Mexico City. Ms. Mota was still in her pajamas as the men approached her parents' breezeblock house.

She was in the bedroom, but most of her family was in the front room, cooing over a newborn baby. As the family prepared a milk bottle, the assassins smashed the door open. Amid the commotion, Ms. Mota came out of her bedroom and said firmly, "I am Gisela." In front of her terrified family, the men beat Ms. Mota and shot her several times, killing her.

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Defendant's Lawyer Argues Punishment Was Excessive Given Efforts to Legalize Pot

A Canadian man has been handed a mandatory life sentence for his role in a multi-million-dollar drug-trafficking operation that smuggled thousands of kilograms of marijuana into the United States, authorities said.

Michael (Mickey) Woods, 45, of Cornwall, Ont., who had been convicted following a six-day jury trial last summer, was sentenced in federal court in Syracuse, N.Y. despite objections that the punishment was cruel and unusual. The court also ordered a $45-million (U.S.) judgment against him. Woods and co-accused Gaetan (Gates) Dinelle, 42, also of Cornwall, were found guilty of membership in three separate but related conspiracies, each involving a tonne or more of marijuana destined for the United States.

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ALBANY - New York joined the ranks of nearly half the states on Thursday in allowing the use of medical marijuana with the opening of eight dispensaries statewide, serving a variety of tinctures, concentrates, vapors and other forms of the drug.

How many patients actually received medicine from those dispensaries, however, was uncertain; several locations around the state had customers who entered, but it was not clear if any actually bought the drug, or were qualified to do so under the state's strict guidelines. On Thursday, officials at the state's Department of Health said that only 51 patients had been certified for the program thus far, though that process only began on Dec. 23 and requires the approval of a physician who has registered with the state.

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ALBANY, N.Y. - New York joined the ranks of nearly half the states Thursday in allowing the use of medical marijuana with the opening of eight dispensaries statewide, serving a variety of syrups, concentrates, and other nonsmokable forms of the drug.

How many patients will initially visit those dispensaries is uncertain.

Officials at the state's Department of Health said that by Wednesday only 51 patients had qualified for the drug. Such certification, however, began only Dec. 23 and requires the approval of a physician who has registered with the state.

[continues 186 words]

ALBANY (AP) - New Yorkers with cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's disease, or other qualifying conditions will be able to obtain medical marijuana as early as Thursday, 18 months after lawmakers passed what is considered one of the strictest medical cannabis programs in the nation.

The program is off to a slow start: Only 150 physicians have completed the required registration with the state, and only eight of 20 dispensaries expect to open on Thursday. The remaining 12 are expected to open by month's end.

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - A New York company says it will soon offer the first certified kosher medical pot.

Vireo Health says its nonsmokable medical cannabis products have been certified as conforming to the Jewish dietary law by the Orthodox Union.

Vireo says it's the first time a medical cannabis product has been deemed kosher.

The Orthodox Union says it awarded certification after inspecting Vireo's facilities to ensure the marijuana was grown and processed according to kosher standards. Those include, for example, insect-free plants.

Vireo says the certification will help the company serve patients among New York's Jewish population, the nation's largest. Its program is slated to start next month and will serve patients in New York state with certain qualifying conditions.

[end]

America has been awash in Prohibition-era nostalgia of late, with speakeasy-style bars, artisanal moonshine and "bootlegger balls" proliferating from New York to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Los Angeles, where revelers in period dress will pack that city's 1930s Union Station to ring in the New Year.

But in her new book, "The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State" (W. W. Norton), the historian Lisa McGirr tells anything but a nostalgic story. The 18th Amendment, she argues, didn't just give rise to vibrant night life and colorful, Hollywood-ready characters, like Isidor Einstein, New York's celebrated "Prohibition Agent No. 1." More enduringly, and tragically, it also radically expanded the federal government's role in law enforcement, with consequences that can be seen in the crowded prisons of today.

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My great-grandfather Vincenzo negotiated Prohibition by fermenting two barrels of wine a year. It was perfectly legal, he insisted. Vincenzo was lucky to be a New Yorker. In her fine history of Prohibition, "The War on Alcohol," Lisa McGirr, a professor of history at Harvard, shows us that a poor Italian in Illinois or a black man in Virginia might very well have been jailed, shot or sentenced to a chain gang.

Chain gangs are a far cry from Prohibition's lore, which imagines puritans winning a ban on liquor that America flatly rejected. Magazines gleefully published "bartender's guides," directing the thirsty to the nearest whiskey. The law spawned crime, shootouts and a kind of gangster romance embodied by Jay Gatsby. Worse, drinking became hip. Young people -sported flasks and haunted speakeasies. Eventually, inevitably, the whole mess -collapsed.

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It wafts down the pavement, an unmistakable odor more Haight-Ashbury than New York - the tang of marijuana smoke in the city's streets. If the smell (and the lightheadedness a passer-by may feel) is anything to judge by, lighting up and strolling around seems increasingly common in pockets of Brooklyn, on side streets in Manhattan and in other public spaces.

Street smokers say they are emboldened by laws that have legalized the recreational use of marijuana in other parts of the country and by the relatively low-key comments by New York's leaders, including the police commissioner, about the drug.

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To the Editor:

Re "Cut Sentences for Nonviolent Felons" (editorial, Nov. 23):

Like you, I wish that the sentencing reform legislation pending in Congress went further. But the reality is that more ambitious reform proposals do not have enough support to pass in this Congress.

That's why I negotiated the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act with Senator Chuck Grassley. Our bill has strong support from the civil rights community and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a strong bipartisan vote. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has pledged to bring it before the full Senate next year.

[continues 118 words]

A recent letter stated: "Legalizing drugs would eliminate a lot of crime." It was spot on. Let me expand. When Prohibition ended, criminals lost their monopoly in supplying alcohol to the public. Without the monopoly, their income dried up. Their (sometimes poisonous) product couldn't compete with the good stuff put out by the newly back in business, old line brewers and distillers.

Unfortunately, the prohibition on alcohol was switched to heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Even more unfortunately, the results have been even worse. Prohibition had corrupted whole police departments. We now have whole countries, Mexico for one, devastated by the international criminal drug gangs. Our own law enforcement and criminal justice system is overwhelmed by a war on drugs that can't be won.

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To the Editor:

Regarding your thoughtful Nov. 23 editorial "Cut Sentences for Nonviolent Felons," mass incarceration is self-perpetuating. Nonviolent drug offenders are eventually released back into society with dismal job prospects and the equivalent of an advanced degree in criminality.

Children of inmates are at increased risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency.

Turning nonviolent drug offenders into unemployable ex-cons is a senseless waste of tax dollars. If we can reduce highly addictive tobacco use without arresting smokers and imprisoning tobacco retailers, we can do the same for less addictive albeit illegal drugs.

Destroying the futures and families of citizens who make unhealthy choices doesn't benefit anyone.

Washington

The writer is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy.

[end]

In the last few years, America's out-of-control incarceration boom has finally started to get the sustained public scrutiny, and condemnation, that it deserves. But one key element of the story still receives too little attention: the number of women in the nation's prisons and jails.

Men account for more than 90 percent of those behind bars. But the number of female inmates, most of whom are mothers, has been growing at an even faster rate than the overall prison population. In 1980 there were just over 15,000 women in state prisons. By 2010 there were nearly 113,000. When jail inmates are added in, there are about 206,000 women currently serving time - nearly one-third of all female prisoners in the world.

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