Dear Editor of the Spectrum,

Colin Knoer got an arrow splitting bull's eye (Marijuana Legalization: The NORML Perspective, Jan. 7, 2011) [online version - printed in Wednesday's paper], citizens have contempt for government's message about drugs and the plant cannabis (marijuana) due to their lies, half-truths and propaganda. How many citizens try cannabis and realize it's not nearly as harmful as claimed by government and believe other substances must not be so bad either only to become addicted to hard drugs? Government even classifies cannabis as a Schedule I substance alongside heroin, while meth and cocaine are only Schedule II substances.

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A New York police officer whose father was killed in the line of duty nearly 30 years ago fired an errant shot on Saturday during a drug raid in the Bronx and wounded a suspect's 76-year-old father, the authorities said.

The officer, Andrew McCormack, 37, and other Emergency Service officers accompanied narcotics officers to 1184 Evergreen Avenue about 7 a.m. to execute a warrant for the arrest of Alberto Colon, 41, the police said.

They had forced open the door of Apartment 4D when Officer McCormack's weapon discharged one shot, said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation. The round struck Jose Colon, Alberto Colon's father, in the abdomen, and he was taken to Jacobi Medical Center, the authorities said. He was expected to survive.

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For states that are serious about trimming deficits, out-of-control prison costs are a good place to start cutting. The expenses of housing and caring for more than one million state prison inmates has quadrupled in the last decade from about $12 billion a year to more $52 billion a year. This, in turn, has squeezed budgets for essential programs like education.

Governors seeking wisdom on how to proceed could start by looking at what Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, is trying to accomplish in Indiana.

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When can the police forcibly enter your home to search for evidence without a warrant? That issue, pivotal to fundamental freedom, was argued last Wednesday before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case, Kentucky v. King, involves an arrest made on October 13, 2005 during a "buy-bust" operation that was being conducted at an apartment complex by the Lexington-Fayette County Police Department.

An undercover informant positioned his truck in a lot adjacent to an apartment building where the drug transactions would take place.

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To the Editor:

Re "Bit by Bit, a Mexican Police Force Is Eradicated" (front page, Jan. 12):

As a former police officer who fought in America's domestic "war on drugs" for more than 30 years, and who lost several colleagues gunned down in the line of fire, I have to ask: How many more cops have to die before our politicians realize that drug prohibition doesn't work?

In making drugs illegal, we haven't appreciably reduced use. Yet we have inadvertently created a huge black market controlled by cartels and gangs willing to kill anyone -- including cops -- to protect their profits.

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Last year, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that 16.7 million Americans aged 12 or older used marijuana at least once in the month prior to being surveyed. Despite the frequent use of the drug, it remains a Schedule I illegal drug in America.

The UB chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) works to dispel the propaganda and misinformation regarding marijuana and hemp. In addition, UB NORML also takes a stance on the legalization of the drug.

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To the Editor:

Re "Salvia Takes a Starring Role" (Dec. 26, 2010): The article on Salvia divinorum was right: "It's not an experience that everyone is eager to repeat, or try."

In fact, it's rare, and laws are generally irrelevant to drug choices. Drug experimentation peaks by age 21, especially after 17. Almost all teenagers experiment with illegal substances, notably alcohol and marijuana.

Alcohol clearly is the normal sequential "gateway" and crucial in almost all teenage and adult drug abuse and addiction. Heavy youthful alcohol use and use of other drugs go hand in hand. Almost all light drinkers show little interest in other drugs.

Minus accurate comparisons with alcohol and proper warning about age, dosage and dangerous combinations of drugs, particularly with alcohol, drug policy is doomed to be irrelevant and incoherent.

Jerry Epstein

Houston

The writer is the president of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas.

[end]

Vancouver, British Columbia - When people ask me, an American expat, what it's like living in Canada, I tell them, "It's kind of like living in the States, if the States were on lithium."

This is the price of living in the land of "Peace, Order and Good Government." With the notable exceptions of Arcade Fire fans and the Alberta tar sands developers, there's just not a lot of mania to be found north of the border. But for a few weeks last February, all that changed: Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics, and Canada went off its meds.

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Mexico City - In my country we've been learning under extreme duress to live in a different nation from the one we grew up in. Some 30,000 people have died in Mexico in the last four years in a grotesque carnival of shootouts, beheadings and mutilations; the city of Juarez has emerged as a worldwide symbol of lawlessness and horror; tens of thousands of children have been left orphaned and permanently embittered against the state. But what happened in August and unfolded throughout September and the fall was something else.

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Marijuana use by young people is on the rise, and officials say conflicting messages about the dangers of marijuana contribute to the increase.

The annual Monitoring the Future Survey conducted by the National Institute of Drug Abuse found that use of the drug on a daily basis has increased among eighth-, 10th- and 12th graders.

One in 16 high school seniors used marijuana daily or almost daily, and for the second year in a row more 12th graders used marijuana than smoked cigarettes. More than a fifth of the seniors said they had used marijuana within 30 days of the survey while about 19 percent had smoked cigarettes.

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NYPD To Post Misdemeanor Statistics For Past 10 Years In Response To Allegations That Serious Offenses Were Downgraded

The New York Police Department on Monday begins posting data on citywide misdemeanor crime complaints dating back 10 years, partly in response to claims that withholding such statistics indicated it had something to hide, officials said.

Academicians and journalists suspicious of the veracity of the NYPD's long-shrinking total of "index crimes"-murders, rapes, robberies, felony assaults, grand larcenies, burglaries and auto thefts-have theorized that the police department is downgrading many of these serious crimes into misdemeanors and thereby artificially dropping the city's crime rate. The index-crime rate for 2010 is expected to register a decline for the 22nd consecutive year.

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The whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks has not been convicted of a crime. The Justice Department has not even pressed charges over its disclosure of confidential State Department communications. Nonetheless, the financial industry is trying to shut it down.

Visa, MasterCard and PayPal announced in the past few weeks that they would not process any transaction intended for WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, Bank of America decided to join the group, arguing that WikiLeaks may be doing things that are "inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments."

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As the body count in the Mexican drug wars mounts beyond 30,000, federal authorities have tracked more than 60,000 guns in the past four years back across the border to American dealers. Congress, enthralled with the gun lobby, has done nothing about a legal loophole increasingly at the heart of the carnage -- the dealers' freedom to make multiple sales of AK-47s and other battlefield assault rifles without having to report to federal authorities, as the law requires for handgun sales.

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A look into all things "Operation: Ivy League."

Operation Ivy League is over. The dangerous element is removed from campus, and we can spend these last few work-filled, sleepless nights at ease, free from the menace of illegal drugs.

Like many of my peers, I've spent the past week obsessively reading articles about the bust. And after reading countless Spectrum updates and snarky Gawker posts, I realized that this grand Columbia scandal was perhaps not so grand at all.

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After on-campus drug busts, a group of students hope to raise at least $11,000 -- a number they chose because police say they bought this amount worth of drugs from the five students they arrested.

Four students have started a project dubbed "Operation Ivy League: The Legit Deal," an effort to reduce substance abuse at Columbia in light of the recent drug arrests.

The students -- Wilmer Cerda, SEAS '11, Carmen Marin, SEAS '11, Elizabeth Pino, CC '11, and Slav Sobkov, SEAS '12 -- are selling T-shirts for $15 each, and they plan to use the proceeds to start an anti-drug abuse campaign next semester. They said that they are not yet sure how exactly they will do that, but that they are brainstorming and have been in contact with a few outside organizations.

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Five Columbia University students have been snared in an undercover drug sting dubbed "Operation Ivy League." They stand accused of selling a menu of narcotics out of fraternity houses and on-campus residences, authorities said Tuesday.

Each of the five students in the apparently well-coordinated network allegedly specialized in selling a certain type of drug, authorities said. During a five-month investigation, undercover New York Police Department officers made 31 purchases from the students, totaling nearly $11,000, said Bridget Brennan, the city's special narcotics prosecutor.

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If a new student-driven proposal passes, Columbia students calling for help in emergencies related to drugs or alcohol will no longer have to fear punishment.

The Columbia chapter of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy-an international organization that pushes for reforms in drug policies-is currently circulating a proposal through the student councils that would allow students to ask Columbia University Emergency Medical Services-commonly known as CAVA-for support in drug-related situations without the threat of Dean's Discipline.

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"Stop right there," barked the officer stationed next to the X-ray machine at the entrance to 1 Police Plaza.

"You can't bring that in here."

The item in question was a hand-painted sign with a decidedly non-law-enforcement-friendly message.

"HELP!" it read in bright green letters. "I NEED MONEY FOR WEED!"

Its owner made a sour face and started to protest, but it became clear his efforts would be futile.

"Just leave it outside somewhere," the officer shrugged. As the man scurried out to find a suitable stash spot, the officer rolled his eyes.

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The recent vote defeating California's Proposition 19, legalizing the use of marijuana regrettably prolongs a drug policy that does not work. Low-level users will continue to be targeted rather than the drug cartels and drug lords who run free.

Proposition 19 was voted down by a margin of 56 to 44 percent on Nov. 2. The attempt by its supporters to legalize the recreational sale and use of marijuana would have allowed local governments to regulate and tax the commercial production, distribution and sale of marijuana to adults. Sale to minors would have been illegal, as well as use on school premises, in public settings, and in the presence of minors.

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Marijuana smoking often starts in adolescence - and the timing could not be worse, a new study suggests.

Young adults who started using the drug regularly in their early teens performed significantly worse on tests assessing brain function than did subjects who were at least 16 when they started, scientists reported last week.

The findings led researchers at McLean Hospital to surmise that the developing teenage brain may be particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of marijuana.

"We have to understand that the developing brain is not the same as the adult brain," said Dr. Staci A. Gruber, the paper's senior author and director of cognitive and clinical neuroimaging at McLean, a Harvard-affiliated hospital in Belmont, Mass.

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