Levy Faces Marijuana Charges in Mississippi

The Tennessee state medical examiner's career is in jeopardy and some of his biggest cases under scrutiny after Mississippi investigators uncovered a package of marijuana addressed to him and more of the drug in his hotel room.

Mississippi, Tennessee and Metro Nashville suspended contracts for forensic work done by Bruce Levy's two companies after his Tuesday arrest in Ridgeland, Miss., on felony marijuana possession charges. Levy, 49, was due to collect $3.8 million this year from Metro alone through Forensic Medical Management Services.

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Testing students for drug use is tricky business, so while some local school systems recently have adopted policies, others have experimented and stopped testing altogether.

In December, Bradley County Schools began using a new policy that allows officials to test students if there is reasonable cause -- the student smells of alcohol or marijuana or if officials find evidence or hear reports of drug or alcohol use by teachers or other students.

"(Drug testing) is common, but it's certainly not something that every school system does," said Chris McCarty, the attorney for Bradley County Schools who helped draft the system's new policy. "It is a difficult area of the law, because you're going to run into Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure issues."

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Prescription painkillers may be replacing illegal narcotics as drugs of choice, a sheriff's narcotics detective said.

And users are going through different means to get their hands on the pills - through prescription forgeries, doctor shopping, drug store robberies, home and auto burglaries and thefts from family medicine cabinets, said Detective Jerremy Weaver.

For example, grand jurors indicted six people for prescription fraud last week after Weaver accused them of forging a physician's prescription 57 times to get Percocet, a prescription painkiller.

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Danger is always lurking: The undercover drug deal that went awry last week depicts the perilous work of a covert cop.

A frightening reminder of the dangerous nature of police work, especially for undercover officers, played out on a residential street in Southwest Memphis last Wednesday.

An undercover Memphis police officer met a crack dealer for what was supposed to be a routine drug sale.

The dealer and a 16-year-old accomplice had other ideas, according to police. They pulled guns, demanded money and discovered the officer's recording device before firing a burst of shots at the officer and his partner.

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An undercover Memphis police officer met a crack dealer at the trunk of a 2005 Ford for what looked to be a routine drug sale.

Nothing that followed was routine.

Within seconds, police said, the dealer and a 16-year-old boy pulled guns, demanded money and discovered the officer's recording device before firing a flurry of shots at the officer and his partner.

2009 Crime Series. The officers escaped, one playing dead in a ditch while the other diverted attention from his partner. Neither was injured.

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The people of Tennessee need to be informed on the medical marijuana bill.

Our government is putting normal innocent people in jail and giving normal non-violent citizens a record for no reason.

The people of Tennessee need to know about this bill. It's wrong for the public not to know.

The laws in place now are to govern us with safety. I feel like I am being harassed instead of protected and, yes, I do live in Chattanooga.

DeVAUGHN TYLER

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Regarding your Jan. 11 editorial, drugs did not spawn Mexico's organized crime networks. Just like alcohol prohibition gave rise to Al Capone, drug prohibition created the violent drug-trafficking organizations blamed for all the killings in Mexico. With alcohol prohibition repealed in the U.S., liquor bootleggers no longer gun each other down in drive-by shootings. It's worth noting that Mexico's upsurge in violence only began after an anti-drug crackdown created a power vacuum among competing cartels. From a political perspective, Mexican President Felipe Calderon stands to benefit from the violence.

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After reading David Magee's commentary (Jan. 12), I have to say Tennessee is ready for medical marijuana.

There is no sensible reason for our state's criminal laws to interfere with patients' and doctors' judgments about the best treatment option for Tennesseans with severe illnesses. Numerous prestigious medical organizations support legal medical marijuana access for the seriously ill, including the American Public Health Association, the American Nurses Association, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Last year, Rep. Jeanne Richardson and Sen. Beverly Marrero introduced SB 209 and HB 368, legislation that would have legalized medical marijuana in Tennessee.

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He's got political backbone. That's one thing you can say about U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Memphis.

He's also wading into complicated territory on the topic of legalized medicinal marijuana.

A report this week indicates Rep. Cohen will be a featured speaker on Wednesday at the Marijuana Policy Project's 15th anniversary gala, taking the stage with advocates of legalized cannabis including Cheech and Chong, a comedy duo known for joking about marijuana usage.

In a 2007 speech before the U.S. House of Representatives, the lawmaker from Memphis talked about a Maryland man who suffered from pancreatic cancer and found relief by using medical marijuana.

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Story Revealed of How Meeting Happened

WASHINGTON - Every Elvis fan has seen the picture: Elvis in a dark cape and gold necklace, shaking hands with a puffy-eyed Richard Nixon at the White House. It's one of the biggest sellers at The National Archives gift shop - in snow globes, on coffee mugs and postcards.

On Wednesday night, two days before Presley's 75th birthday, the full story of how that iconic moment came to be was laid out by two men who were there and helped make it happen. Jerry Schilling, an Elvis friend, and Egil "Bud" Krogh, a Nixon aide, hadn't met since that magical moment in the Oval Office 39 years ago, and they had tales to tell.

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When most Americans think of Mexico, if they think of it at all, it is usually related to illegal immigration. That, of course, is an important issue for both nations, but it is not the only subject of importance that affects the relationship between the United States and its neighbor to the South. The continued U.S. appetite for illegal drugs and the powerful drug cartels in Mexico that feed it require attention as well. Ignoring the latter is dangerous to both nations and complicates the effort to promote meaningful immigration reform.

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Barrel-chested, gregarious and flush with cash, "Jerry Whittier" was 41 years old when he rolled into Gatlinburg in early 1980. Appearing to be a successful entrepreneur, he bought an upscale chalet home for $125,000. He gave generously to local charities.

And he planned to buy what was then the Sevier County Airport, recalls retired 4th District Attorney General Al Schmutzer. That deal came apart in 1981, when he was linked to a huge cocaine shipment seized from an airplane there.

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Schools Resource Officer (SOR) Joe Duncan has successfully completed the D.A.R.E. training program that was held at Natchez Trace Park at the Pin Oaks Lodge. According to Duncan, the two-week program was one of the most difficult and intense training programs he has ever taken. Although there was no physical training, Duncan states that he had a lot of homework that sometimes kept him up until midnight. He would then have to be back in class the following morning at 8 a.m.

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Thanks for publishing the recent outstanding letter: "End prohibition of marijuana" (Dec. 2).

I'd like to add that it makes no sense, economic or moral, to jail or imprison marijuana users or sellers. Our jails and prisons should be reserved for those who harm others against their will - not marijuana users, sellers or growers.

We don't jail or imprison those who produce, sell or use tobacco products, even though tobacco is a highly addictive and very deadly product.

We don't have criminals growing tobacco in clandestine locations.

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Our state tax monies need to be used to prosecute violent crime, not punish medical marijuana users. Over 500 deaths are reported each year from Tylenol overdose, but marijuana has never been listed as the medical cause of an overdose death.

Can we not legalize, tax and control medical marijuana production and distribution as a means of taking the violence out of its production and distribution while generating millions in tax revenue for a struggling state?

We need to deal with the illegal production, sale and consumption of marijuana as being one of social significance. As a society, we must focus our dwindling police resources on preventing violent crimes instead of clogging the court systems with simple cases of possession of marijuana, which takes valuable officers out of the field and reduces the force desperately needed to prevent more violent crimes.

Don McMunn,

PLEASANT VIEW 37146

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By the time you read this, Bernie Ellis will be home on the farm he's had for nearly four decades in the Fly community 12 miles south of Leipers Fork. There'll just be less of it. His farm will be 25 acres smaller, but Ellis is willing to live with that-considering the federal government almost took it all, and meant to throw him in prison to boot. Last month, Ellis, a respected public-health epidemiologist with a 35-year career, signed civil asset forfeiture papers handing 25 acres of farmland over to the U.S. government. The agreement ends a nightmare that began seven years ago when he was raided for growing marijuana-a small amount he used only for medicinal purposes, and to ease the suffering of the terminally ill.

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Thank you for printing Froma Harrop's Oct. 27 column "America's best idea meets one of the worst."

The headline refers to illegal pot plants being found in America's national parks -- plants that should be growing safely in backyards rather than destroying our beautiful national parks.

She mentioned several key points such as Mexican drug cartels, increased pot potency, medical marijuana dispensaries, tax revenue, farmers, public favor for legalization, and the political nonsense stopping it from happening.

I'm sure she didn't forget to mention all the other related issues to pot prohibition. There are just too many of them.

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A federal judge in Chattanooga on Wednesday rejected a plea for a lighter sentence from a young man accused of a crack cocaine crime, despite proposed legislation to do away with old sentencing rules that treat crimes involving crack much more harshly than those involving powder cocaine.

The sentencing hearing of Amar Walker in U.S. District Court on Wednesday highlighted the current national debate over the legitimacy of a 1980s-era law that sought to stamp out the ravages of crack on predominantly black inner-city neighborhoods.

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President Barack Obama has previously admitted using illegal drugs such as marijuana and cocaine years ago and has wisely renounced that drug abuse.

But his own dangerous use of drugs ought to steer him away from any act that might confer false legitimacy on drug abuse. Unfortunately, it has not.

In 2004, campaigning for the Senate, he said, "We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws."

During the presidential race in 2008, he offered support for so-called "medical marijuana."

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The Justice Department told federal prosecutors in 14 states that they should not longer prosecute individuals who use or distribute medical marijuana as long as such consumption or sales do not break existing state laws. A memo forwarded from the Justice Department to U.S. attorneys in those states on Monday delineates the new standard. The revised policy is eminently sensible from medical, legal and economic perspectives.

Medically, the government's decision acknowledges a fact long known in health care circles. Marijuana is sometimes the only substance that can provide meaningful relief from the often intractable pain often associated with cancer, AIDs and other grievous diseases and medical conditions including chemotherapy-induced nausea. It has became an acknowledged agent of last resort in pain management.

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