Points to New Jersey Decision

BAY RIDGE - State Senator Diane J. Savino, (D-Staten Island/ Bay Ridge), recently praised New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's decision to implement his state's medical marijuana program and urged New York to follow the lead of its cross-Hudson neighbor.

"Anyone who has watched a loved one struggle with a debilitating illness would do almost anything to help alleviate their pain," Savino said. "New Jersey showed real compassion for Garden State residents who are suffering from cancer, multiple sclerosis and other life-threatening diseases. We need to follow this example and pass legislation to allow doctors to prescribe medical marijuana when no other option is available."

[continues 165 words]

Like many people who contend that marijuana eases pain and appetite loss from serious diseases, Ms. Booker cheered in January 2010, when New Jersey legalized its use in cases like hers. But a year and a half later, there is still no state-sanctioned marijuana available for patients, and none being grown, and there is no sign of when there might be.

In the last few months, officials in New Jersey, as well as several other states, have said that mixed signals from the Obama administration have left them unsure whether their medical marijuana programs could draw federal prosecution of the people involved, including state employees.

[continues 974 words]

More than three dozen members and associates of an alleged Albanian organized-crime syndicate have been charged in a long-running scheme to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and prescription drugs into the U.S., as well as Canada and Europe, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

A federal indictment outlined the purported decadelong scheme-and revealed an array of colorful nicknames the defendants allegedly used: "The Bear," "Juicehead," "Fat Ange," "Jo-Jo," "The Kid," "Lucky" and "Little Guy," among others. Some echoed the monikers of Italian organized crime. A man named Faik Mehmeti was known as "Frank Nitti," according to the indictment.

[continues 248 words]

There is an age-old debate over alcoholism: is the problem in the sufferer's head -- something that can be overcome through willpower, spirituality or talk therapy, perhaps -- or is it a physical disease, one that needs continuing medical treatment in much the same way as, say, diabetes or epilepsy?

Increasingly, the medical establishment is putting its weight behind the physical diagnosis. In the latest evidence, 10 medical institutions have just introduced the first accredited residency programs in addiction medicine, where doctors who have completed medical school and a primary residency will be able to spend a year studying the relationship between addiction and brain chemistry.

[continues 1079 words]

I heartily applaud the burgeoning efforts of U.S. Reps. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Barney Frank, D-Mass., to legalize the use of marijuana. I see that as just the first step toward government regulation and the resultant taxation -- providing much needed revenue just waiting to be collected.

Not only will it provide state, local and federal governments with billions in tax money, it also will move the product from drug cartels to government oversight. Kind of a win, win, win.

Charles Keegan

Bethlehem

[end]

The 1986 federal drug law that punished people caught with crack cocaine far more severely than those caught with powder cocaine was a disaster on many levels. It undermined faith in the justice system by discriminating against poor and mainly minority crack users and favoring affluent white users who preferred the chemically identical powdered form.

Congress tinkered at the margins of the law but failed to eliminate the sentencing disparity when it passed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. Now Republican lawmakers are trying to compound a longstanding injustice by opposing a proposal that would allow some people sentenced under the original law to apply for reductions in their prison terms.

[continues 237 words]

With leaders of the noted Abyssinian Baptist Church sitting behind her, a 17-year-old Harlem youth stood in a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday and listened to the terms of a plea agreement that would spare her a possible 25-year prison sentence for her role in a crack-cocaine ring.

Afrika Owes, a former private-school student, was then placed in handcuffs and taken by court officers to begin a 90-day jail term at Rikers Island. Under the plea deal, she will be free in time to begin her senior year of high school and apply to college. If she complies with other terms, she will be designated as a youthful offender-a status that seals the arrest.

[continues 283 words]

To the Editor:

Sylvia Longmire misses the mark in focusing on how legalizing marijuana won't put drug cartels completely out of business ("Legalization Won't Kill the Cartels," Op-Ed, June 19).

Sure, some cartel members will continue selling other illicit wares once marijuana is legalized, but since they currently earn about 60 percent of their profits from illegal marijuana sales, ending the prohibition of that cash crop will seriously undercut their ability to finance continued operations.

And removing such a significant chunk of the cartels' funding will make it significantly easier for law enforcement to isolate and destroy them. As a former border patrol officer once charged with enforcing prohibition, I never dared dream of such success. Each arrest only created a lucrative job opening for someone else to step in and fill the insatiable demand for illegal drugs.

[continues 55 words]

To the Editor:

Sylvia Longmire is probably right that the legalization of marijuana isn't the silver bullet to end the carnage in Mexico. Yet employing economics where brute military force has failed could still be a step in the right direction. Moreover, undermining cartels is just one benefit to regulating marijuana as we do alcohol and tobacco.

Currently, marijuana is sold in an enormous underground market. To maximize profits and foster addiction, cartels routinely lace marijuana with substances like phencyclidine, or PCP, and methamphetamine.

[continues 70 words]

The June 15 story about another big drug investigation to bust a major pipeline to the Capital Region avoided questions of law enforcement that would address the tough reality that drug prohibition doesn't work.

All of these drug investigations are concentrated in the inner cities while the wealthier suburban areas of upstate New York are ignored by law enforcement. How long will it be before the next big drug investigation is launched in the next inner city?

Statistically, there is as much drug use in the suburbs, but these investigations are selectively enforced and the media never ask law enforcement why. They merely report the number of arrests or the amount of cash and drugs confiscated without reporting the cost of these lengthy investigations to the taxpayer.

[continues 111 words]

If Congressional Republicans are really intent on getting to the bottom of an ill-conceived sting operation along the border by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, they should call President Felipe Calderon of Mexico as an expert witness.

Mr. Calderon has the data showing that the tens of thousands of weapons seized from the Mexican drug cartels in the last four years mostly came from the United States. Three out of five of those guns were battlefield weapons that were outlawed here until the assault weapons ban was allowed to lapse in 2004. To help him stop the bloody mayhem, he is pleading with Washington to re-enact the ban and impose other needed controls.

[continues 203 words]

Night court in Manhattan, Monday, 7:30 p.m.

For a moment, after the lawyers had finished talking and the judge had murmured the sentence, Felix did not move. He stood in front of the bench, then looked at his lawyer, who nodded and sent him to wait in the pews with the spectators.

Felix slid into the second row, the tension heaving from him in a big sigh. For the first time in more than 30 hours, he was not sitting among the arrested in the holding cells. On Sunday morning, he was arrested on a charge of misdemeanor possession of marijuana with a group of other young men gathered on 42nd Street for the National Puerto Rican Day Parade.

[continues 652 words]

The Bloomberg administration says that by arresting more than 350,000 people for having small amounts of marijuana since 2002, the police have helped drive down serious crime -- and that the consequences for the people locked up have been minimal.

Nearly 90 percent of those arrested on charges of personal possession of marijuana are black or Latino, although its use by young white people is rampant in affluent quarters of the city.

Faced with criticism from members of the City Council and the State Legislature, aides to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have emphasized that few of those arrested on pot charges actually end up with criminal convictions because most cases are dismissed and sealed after one year. In effect, they say, the arrest process itself -- which can stretch for 24 hours or more, under squalid conditions in holding pens - -- is the extent of the punishment.

[continues 637 words]

Police Say Alleged Harlem Dealer Ran Operation In Low-Key, Corporate Style

Law-enforcement officials say they didn't have to look much further than a picture on Ceferino Perez's nightstand to understand him.

Among the drugs, $500,000 in cash, jewelry, guns, luxury cars and other booty that investigators said they seized from Mr. Perez and his tightly run Harlem drug operation was a 6-by-8-inch photo: Al Pacino's drug lord character Tony Montana from the movie "Scarface"-with Mr. Perez's face superimposed over the actor's.

[continues 417 words]

Atlanta

IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America's "war on drugs," which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

[continues 659 words]

Friday marks the 40th anniversary of one of the biggest, most expensive, most destructive social policy experiments in American history: The war on drugs.

On the morning of June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon, speaking from the Briefing Room of the White House, declared: "America's public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive. I have asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive. This will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply, as well as Americans who may be stationed abroad, wherever they are in the world."

[continues 380 words]

BILL: On the Internet last Saturday night, I heard an old time radio show, "Dragnet" -- so old that Jack Webb was still doing Sgt. Friday. When they busted a dope pusher, Jack declared, in his most stirring voice, "Another step toward winning the war on drugs!" What was that, 50 years ago?

DR. DAVE: I agree it's a meaningless slogan, like declaring war on ice cream. Joe Friday's war on illegal drugs of the 50s and 60s was largely fought on the fringes of society--stomping on the drug addicted and disen-franchised 5 percent.

[continues 760 words]

In the wake of several heroin overdoses and fatalities among youths in the region, individuals and local prevention agencies in Yorktown have stepped up efforts to stem this tragic tide.

Christina Farrell lost her daughter Gwendolyn Farrell, 21, in March to an apparent heroin overdose. She believes her death was an accident, she said, and stressed that more education needs to happen on how common "casual use" has become and how easy it can be to acquire tainted or fatally potent drugs.

[continues 390 words]

It was a Tuesday in March when college student Gwendolyn Farrell texted her parents and older sister to let them know she had gotten a 90 on her math test.

The grade was significant, her mother, Christina Farrell, said, because math had always been her most difficult subject.

"That represented to me that she was feeling good, feeling proud," said Farrell, of Yorktown. "She wasn't going down the road to destruction."

[continues 1672 words]

Justice Ginsburg's Dissent Underscores Her Importance to American Law.

What's wrong with the police kicking in the door of an apartment after they smell marijuana drifting from it, if they knock hard, announce who they are and then hear what sounds like evidence being destroyed?

Some lower courts have said the answer is pretty much everything, because the police themselves created the pretext for barging in. But the Supreme Court ruled last week that such a warrantless search does not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment, according to a vague new standard for determining whether the police violated the protection against unreasonable search, or threatened to do so.

[continues 347 words]