He was called "Don Chuy," a narco-trafficker who swaggered in his Stetson, flashy gold jewelry and expensive cowboy boots.

Don Chuy mastered obscenity-laced tough talk that stopped arguments, a stare that could disarm men and the attitude of a big-time player in border drug dealing.

He carried a .380-caliber handgun in a boot. A backup gun dangled from a gold chain on his chest. It was a five-shot .22-caliber pistol so small that a police officer once missed it during a pat-down search.

[continues 1404 words]

Tim Timmons once was a stalwart in the Church of Christ, a conservative Republican, a buttoned-down insurance executive with a busy life, a wife and three children. Slowly but surely, multiple sclerosis robbed him of that life.

Today, at age 54, Timmons is mostly bedridden and rarely sees the outside of his Garland home. What he lacks in physical ability, however, he more than makes up for with his ardent support for legalizing marijuana for seriously ill people.

In fact, he has become the poster boy for the medical marijuana movement in Texas. One organization has named a model law to set up a medical marijuana industry in Texas the Tim Timmons Compassionate Care Act. An Internet search quickly yields videos of Timmons smoking pot and daring politicians and cops to come arrest him.

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Schools across the nation take up the fight against youth alcohol and drug abuse with the annual Red Ribbon Week, which began Saturday and runs through Halloween.

The week shares an anti-drug message with dress-up days and activities aimed at reaching kids of all ages.

The valiant efforts of local schools in this ongoing battle are much appreciated.

However, the best tool for keeping kids clean is right in their own homes.

Vigilant parents offer the most effective anti-drug message and techniques, experts say.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.

The violence in Juarez is something that is really destroying families. I really think that the violence needs to stop, and the president of Mexico should start acting and should be able to help his country to be better.

This entire problem about the drug cartel that is going on is many children have lost one or even both of their parents. It is hard to experience the loss of a loved one because of people trying to live or to get money the easy way.

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MEXICO CITY - If California voters approve a proposition calling for the legalization of marijuana in Tuesday's midterm elections, get ready for a domino effect in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. It is not likely to be immediate, but it will be hard to stop in the near future.

Most of those I've talked to in political, academic and business circles here say that, if California's Proposition 19 is approved, it will be very hard for the Mexican government to keep up the U.S.-backed anti-drug policies related to cracking down on the marijuana trade.

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If the shifting moral consensus of Americans was ever in doubt, look no further than Proposition 19. This proposition represents the single most groundbreaking stride in the legalization of marijuana, while it simultaneously represents a full out cultural shift of mindsets in Americans.

The long-standing taboo against the evils of marijuana is slowly breaking. The glorification of marijuana is ever more prevalent in today's society, as shown heavily in Prop 19. California voters young and old are anxious to try and pass the proposition during the state's midterm elections.

[continues 734 words]

AUSTIN -- Former first lady Laura Bush recalls the vibrant, safer Juarez that many newcomers to the border don't know.

She often thinks about the "glamorous" city across the Rio Grande from El Paso that played host to her parents' first date.

And, she remembers the childhood trips she took with her grandparents to the open-air markets.

Now, she hopes for an end to the drug-cartel violence that has brought the city infamy for its carnage.

"I am sorry that this sort of culture of violence has shown up in Mexico because that's really not the culture of the Mexican people," Bush said during an interview with the El Paso Times while in Austin last week. She was attending the Texas Book Festival, an event that she started 15 years ago when her husband, former President George W. Bush, was governor.

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As if our coverage of continuing methamphetamine lab busts by the Angelina County Sheriff's Office were not enough, you only need to look at a few statistics to realize how much work we have to do in overcoming the abuse of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.

- - Tobacco is linked to an estimated 440,000 deaths per year in America.

- - Every year, abuse of illicit drugs and alcohol contributes to the death of more than 100,000 Americans.

- - Environmental smoke kills 53,000 non-smoking Americans yearly and is the third-leading cause of preventable death.

[continues 443 words]

The slayings of three people connected to the U.S. Consulate in Juarez prompted the U.S. government to deploy 200 law enforcement agents to El Paso earlier this year, according to a federal report obtained by the El Paso Times.

Those agents played a part in a pilot program designed to help Mexico fight the cartel war in Juarez that has claimed more than 6,700 lives since 2008, said the report published by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

[continues 680 words]

Here's an instance where the average citizens in Mexico are beginning to use resolve to fight back against the heavily armed drug cartels.

Without bullets.

The small town of Praxedis G. Guerrero, just south of eastern El Paso County, has nine women on a 13-person police force, and the new chief of police is a 20-year-old female university student.

Marisol Valles Garcia, who took office Wednesday, said, "People trust women more. They are more sensitive ... Fear is always there. I think we are all scared."

[continues 212 words]

EARLY, Texas-A message between old friends who hadn't been in touch for a while led to a drug arrest after the recipient of the "So do you smoke weed?" text turned out to be a police officer. Amanda Williams is a reserve officer with the Early Police Department. The Brownwood Bulletin reported Friday that Williams said she received the text message Tuesday asking about getting together to smoke some marijuana that the man had. Early said she had not spoken to the man in some time and he did not know that she's a law officer.

Williams let police know that she agreed to meet the man at a park.

Early police and Texas troopers were on hand to detain the San Angelo man, who faces a marijuana possession charge.

Early is 120 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

[end]

People have to realize that there's a limit to what the U.S. government can do for Americans caught up in the violence in Juarez.

A group of Mexican businessmen recently asked U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, for more protection for people with dual nationalities who still go to Juarez or who have to flee the city.

He was asked to see what could be done about having U.S. agencies in Juarez become more active in protecting U.S. citizens and residents working in that city.

[continues 176 words]

Mexican President Felipe Calderon's plan for strengthening state police appears to be one logical way to reduce the country's epidemic of extortion and kidnappings. They are two of the offshoots of the ongoing war against drug cartels.

The president spoke in Juarez this week; it was his third visit to our sister city this year and came as no end seems in sight to the drug cartels battling each other and law enforcement as the cartels fight to control the flow of drugs in this area of the border.

[continues 311 words]

A group of Mexican businessmen pressed U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes on Thursday to do more to protect people with dual nationalities who flee Juarez or still go there.

Members of La Red, an El Paso political group of Mexican professionals, asked Reyes, D-Texas, to implement an emergency system to contact U.S. law enforcement when kidnappings occur. Some professionals also pushed him to ask U.S. agencies in Juarez to become more involved in protecting U.S. citizens and residents working in Mexico.

[continues 260 words]

Re: "Marijuana not without health risks - In legalization debate, the facts are often overlooked, says Itai Danovitch," Monday Viewpoints.

Professor Danovitch repeats the same vague but ominous warnings about the health risks of marijuana that we've been hearing since 1937, when the idea that smoking pot was dangerous and addictive first gained widespread acceptance.

Since he specializes in addictions, I can understand how Danovitch is predisposed to define things in those terms, but his article is contradictory. He labels the claim that "cannabis is not physically addictive" as misinformation, but in the next paragraph, he states that "addiction to marijuana does not cause dramatic physical dependence."

[continues 120 words]

I'm a Reagan Republican and a middle-aged female completely uninterested in any kind of drugs - sans beer, which is much worse - and I feel strongly that marijuana should indeed be legalized.

I have seen firsthand what daily marijuana use can do for a person and it is much less harmful to our bodies (in its unaltered form, of course) than prescription pills.

Since we have a maniacal aversion to anything that has to be smoked in this society, I believe that has much to do with the fight against making it legal.

[continues 131 words]

Itai Danovitch lists health problems he says will be faced by new users of marijuana in California if the drug is legalized.

No avalanche of new users occurred in The Netherlands or Portugal when they decriminalized marijuana, or in U.S. states when they legalized marijuana for medical purposes.

Nevertheless, for the sake of discussion, assume it happens in California. Who would the new users be? What is their drug of choice now? It is unlikely that the approximately 30 percent of Americans who do not use alcohol or tobacco would begin to use marijuana because it became legal.

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Re: "Marijuana's safety," by Russ Jones, Wednesday Letters.

Although the opinionated debate on marijuana goes on, the reality is that persons who drink marijuana teas, smoke marijuana or place tincture in their eye are looking for an escape from something.

Why must they alter their mental status and metabolism? And continue to influence ours? As a teacher, clinical educator and previous friend of high-school smokers, I have seen students, patients and friends lose much from wanting a brief run-away. Factually, the effect of having an increased appetite due to smoking marijuana has only been seen in persons who use this menacing weed regularly. Party-taking practices an altered conscious state, and also takes up valuable time, space and money from tried medical and agricultural prescriptions and lands.

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How are a hard-line conservative and a drug dealer the same? After all, one wants to keep drugs illegal and the other...wants to keep drugs illegal.

"What?" you say. "How can that be? Drug dealers want drugs to be legal so they can run rampant, sell all the drugs they want and make millions."

Unfortunately, what sometimes seems like common sense turns out to be untrue.

To illustrate my point, here's a story. Say there's a small border town with five dominant drug dealers. One day, the town decides to crack down on these drug dealers because citizens feel they are hurting the population of the town. The police catch three of the five dealers. Does this mean that drug dealing dramatically drops?

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Re: "Marijuana shouldn't be legalized," by Gayle M. Tippit, Sunday Letters.

As one who has been a San Jose, Calif., police officer, narcotics detective, DEA task force officer, state and federal court-recognized expert in the psychological and physiological effects of drugs and narcotics and who has written programs for and treated hundreds in drug treatment programs, I am shocked by Tippit's statements.

It cannot be backed up by evidence, such as police reports, or by scientific studies. I hope this officer has never testified in court regarding this issue.

My experience in the field parallels that of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Administrative Law Judge Francis Young, who ruled that marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.

Russ Jones, New Braunfels

[end]