WHEN my mother-in-law was in the final, harrowing throes of pancreatic cancer, she had only one good day, and that was the day she smoked pot.

So I was heartened when, at the end of last month, the governors of Washington and Rhode Island petitioned the Obama administration to classify marijuana as a drug that could be prescribed and distributed for medical use. While medical marijuana is legal in 16 states, it is still outlawed under federal law.

My husband and I often thought of recommending marijuana to his mother. She was always nauseated from the chemotherapy drugs and could barely eat for weeks. She existed in a Percocet and morphine haze, constantly fretting that the sedation kept her from saying all the things she wanted to say to us, but unable to face the pain without it. And this was a woman who had such a high tolerance for pain, coupled with a distaste for drugs, that she insisted her dentist not use Novocain and gave birth to her two children without anesthesia. But despite marijuana's power to relieve pain and nausea without loss of consciousness, we were afraid she would find even the suggestion of it scandalous. This was 1997, and my mother-in-law was a very proper, law-abiding woman, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in the 1950s. She'd never even smoked a cigarette.

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A handful of Canadian police officers are operating as armed federal law enforcement officers in the United States, part of a little-known experiment in cross-border policing that will be widely expanded under the new security plan announced Wednesday.

But while local and provincial police agencies are happy to see their officers operate in the States, the two federal agencies in charge of border integrity -- the RCMP and the Canadian Border Security Agency -- want to make sure it's not the Americans who call all the shots in future.

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To the Editor:

Re "Reefer Madness" (Op-Ed, Nov. 7):

The Obama administration's crackdown on state medical marijuana laws, as Ethan Nadelmann pointed out, does not make "any sense in terms of public safety, health or fiscal policy." Medical marijuana is consistently supported by more than 70 percent of voters. A recent Gallup poll shows that more Americans now want to legalize marijuana altogether than support continued prohibition on adult use.

In an earlier era it may have been a smart move for politicians to act "tough on drugs" and stay far away from legalization. But today, many voters recognize that our prohibition laws don't do anything to reduce drug use but do create a black market where cartels and gangs use violence to protect their profits.

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MARIJUANA is now legal under state law for medical purposes in 16 states and the District of Columbia, encompassing nearly one-third of the American population. More than 1,000 dispensaries provide medical marijuana; many are well regulated by state and local law and pay substantial taxes. But though more than 70 percent of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, any use of marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

When he ran for president, Barack Obama defended the medical use of marijuana and said that he would not use Justice Department resources to override state laws on the issue. He appeared to make good on this commitment in October 2009, when the Justice Department directed federal prosecutors not to focus their efforts on "individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana."

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The New York Police Department, already saddled with corruption scandals, saw its image further tainted on Tuesday with the conviction of a detective for planting drugs on a woman and her boyfriend. Metro Twitter Logo.

The bench verdict from Justice Gustin L. Reichbach in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn stemmed from acts committed in 2007 by the defendant, Jason Arbeeny, a 14-year veteran of the department who worked in the Brooklyn South unit.

Before announcing the verdict, Justice Reichbach scolded the department for what he described as a widespread culture of corruption endemic in its drug units.

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Richard Lee, the leader of the marijuana legalization movement in California, does not appear to be intimidated by the federal government's crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries.

Mr. Lee closed his Oakland dispensary, Coffeeshop Blue Sky, this week after the Department of Justice threatened his landlord with criminal prosecution. He then reopened it three doors down, with enormous posters of marijuana buds in the windows.

On Thursday morning, an employee was handing out fliers to customers at the new locale that read: "Thank you for your support. Together we will survive the attack. Long Live Oaksterdam."

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Nearly 40 years after tough new drug laws led to an explosive growth in prison rolls, New York State has dramatically reversed course, chalking up a 62 percent drop in people serving time for drug crimes today compared with 2000, according to a Poughkeepsie Journal analysis.

The steep decline -- driven, experts said, by shifting attitudes toward drug offenders and lower crime -- means that nearly 17,000 fewer minorities serve state time today than in 2000, groups that were hardest hit by the so-called war on drugs. Overall, the prison population declined 22 percent.

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Commissioner Raymond Kelly of the New York Police Department came forthwith too little, too late when he issued a memo directing officers not to arrest people caught with small amounts of marijuana unless the drug is in plain public view. A 1977 law decriminalized minor possession, yet tens of thousands are arrested every year.

In 2010, more than 50,000 people were arrested for possession of marijuana; a vast majority of them were racial minorities and male. Civil rights lawyers say that many of them were stopped as part of the Police Department's broad stop-and-frisk practice and were arrested after officers told them to empty their pockets, which brought the drugs into open view.

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To the Editor:

Re "Trouble With Marijuana Arrests" (editorial, Sept. 27): While Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly's memo may mark the end of the explosion in low-level marijuana arrests, let there be no doubt that the broader issues related to the New York Police Department's escalating use of stop-and-frisk remain as troublesome as ever.

We must retrain police officers to make street stops more constitutional and less confrontational, and to identify clear behavioral triggers for when a stop is justified. The one-size-fits-all explanation of "furtive movement" as a justification for the escalating stops of black and Latino New Yorkers is unacceptable and unconstitutional.

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Marijuana smokers are less likely to be obese than nonsmokers, according to a recent study.

The study found that roughly a third of those who smoke at least three times a week are less likely to be obese than those who do not smoke at all, according to a Sept. 8 Time magazine article.

Researchers analyzed two national studies consisting of 52,000 people and found that 22 percent of those who did not smoke marijuana were obese, compared to 14 percent of marijuana smokers who were obese.

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NEW YORK (AP) -- In many ways, the reputed drug dealers on Grandview Place were good neighbors.

Their two-story, red-brick home in the New York City suburb of Fort Lee, N.J., looked perfectly ordinary with its white trim, gable porch and manicured shrubbery. Neither noise nor sketchy visitors were an issue, authorities say.

The only sign that something was amiss was the rented van that would disappear into a lower-level garage each day. The driver's job: To deliver immigrant workers from the inner city to package heroin in thousands-upon-thousands of glassine envelopes stamped with catchy logos like "LeBron James" and "Roger Dat."

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The police found about 10 grams of marijuana, or about a third of an ounce, when they searched Penelope Harris's apartment in the Bronx last year. The amount was below the legal threshold for even a misdemeanor, and prosecutors declined to charge her. But Ms. Harris, a mother whose son and niece were home when she was briefly in custody, could hardly rest easy.

The police had reported her arrest to the state's child welfare hot line, and city caseworkers quickly arrived and took the children away.

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It was a small amount of marijuana, but it cost a Bronx parent dearly.

The New York Times has a story about New York City caseworkers taking away the son and niece of Penelope Harris, after police found 10 grams of marijuana in her apartment (which is less than the limit threshold for a misdemeanor) according to her lawyer.

The piece is only the latest controversial story involving New York marijuana policy.

In February, it was reported that the NYPD arrested 50,383 people for having marijuana in 2010. That made it the number one reason for arrest in the city.

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Police said Monday they found a white powdery substance believed to be drugs in a pocket of a pastor who was found dead Friday in a New York hotel room.

Law-enforcement officials found the substance in the possession of the Rev. Zachery Tims, Jr. Mr. Tims, who was 42 years old, founded a ministry of 8,000 members in Florida and became a high-profile church leader through his frequent television appearances. He chronicled his struggle with teenage drug addiction in a 2006 memoir.

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Recently the Rome Police Department, with the assistance of several other agencies was able to successfully execute a search warrant that led to the discovery of a methamphetamine lab and the arrest of two individuals. This is unfortunately an increasingly common occurrence around the country as methamphetamine related arrests are on the rise, and the demand for the drug is increasing. Methamphetamine is a stimulant drug that is highly addictive and powerfully activates certain systems in the brain. Although it does have some medical uses (such as in some extreme cases of obesity) those uses are very limited. The chemicals that are used in the manufacture of methamphetamines are often diverted from legal sources, such as cold medicines, fertilizer, refrigerants and even matches.

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Presentation to Canisteo-Greenwood School Board

Canisteo, N.Y. - Drug and alcohol use among Steuben County sixth-,eighth- and tenth-grade students has increased in the past two years, according to a survey of more than 3,100 pupils from all 13 county school districts.

Most study results revealed county student substance use higher than the national average.

Norm McCumiskey, Steuben County drug-free communities coordinator, presented survey findings Monday night to the Canisteo-Greenwood board of education, the first board in Steuben County to hear the presentation.

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After three decades and after spending billions upon billions of our tax dollars -- yours and mine -- we're waking up to the fact that the "War on Drugs" has been a tragic failure! Of the roughly 850,000 drug arrests that law enforcement agencies make each year, it is estimated that 45 percent of those arrests were for the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Even Pat Robertson, Founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, said that, "criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot is costing us a fortune and ruining young people who go into prison as youths and come out hardened criminals." Even former President Jimmy Carter believes that "penalties for the possession of it should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

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Every weekend, softball teams dot fields across the city, office bragging rights in the balance.

On a recent Saturday, players from two rival teams agreed that the stakes in their league were a little higher: their lives.

They had come to Marine Park, Brooklyn, to battle for first place in the Therapeutic Community Association league. Made up of 13 teams from addiction and rehabilitation centers in New York state, the league provides a rare weekend outlet for participants; there's also an eight-team women's league.

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There is no good reason to deprive patients with cancer or H.I.V. or Lou Gehrig's disease of the relief from pain or extreme nausea that could come from using marijuana.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who once opposed his state's medical marijuana law, has changed his mind, deciding earlier this month to allow six alternative treatment centers to begin dispensing the drug to those in need, possibly by early next year. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York needs to change his mind as well.

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ALBANY -- After a legislative session with no progress on legalizing medical marijuana, advocates are hoping that the New Jersey governor's actions last week and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's statement that he is studying the issue will lead to success.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, said his state would move forward with its medical-marijuana act, a reversal from his position last month. He said at the time that he had concerns the state legislation conflicts with federal law and practice.

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