Two more Houston ISD teachers were arrested Friday on drug possession charges, marking at least the ninth such arrest on school district grounds since October.

Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra acknowledged in an interview this week that he was troubled by the recent string of arrests, which mostly involved marijuana police said they found in employees' cars at school. Phone tips to Houston Independent School District police prompted the searches.

"Obviously, these tip line calls woke us up that we had a problem," Saavedra said. "Honestly, I didn't realize we had this type of problem. But I'm kind of convinced now that we have some level of problem with some of our adults."

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Temptation Of Corruption Also Lurks Within Legal Profession

Joel Carcano Jr. stands apart from his 12 co-defendants in an ongoing federal case against one of Texas' most violent prison gangs.

A college-educated paralegal for a McAllen law firm, he appears out of place when lined up with the tattooed gang members, convicted felons and other associates named in the same nine-count indictment.

The others stand accused of a slew of murders, drug smuggling attempts and kidnappings over the past eight years - all undertaken to protect the Texas Syndicate's criminal interests in the Rio Grande Valley.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- America ended Prohibition 75 years ago this week. The ban on the sale of alcohol unleashed a crime wave, as gangsters fought over the illicit booze trade. It sure didn't stop drinking. People turned to speakeasies and bathtub gin for their daily cocktail.

Prohibition -- and the violence, corruption and health hazards that followed -- lives on in its modern version, the so-called War on Drugs. Former law-enforcement officers gathered in Washington to draw the parallels. Their group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), has called for nothing less than the legalization of drugs.

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EL PASO -- Sometimes controversial and always outspoken, former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates said Thursday that casual drug users in the U.S. are at the root of the violence in Juarez and should be shot.

Gates was in El Paso to speak at a ceremony for graduating peace officers.

Gates, who led the Los Angeles Police Department from 1978 to 1992, also predicted that the violence in Juarez would spill over into El Paso and that law enforcement agencies on the U.S. side should be prepared.

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Recruiter Emphasizes the Value of Brains Over Brawn

A federal drug agent gets a badge, and is trained to shoot, kick in doors and slap on handcuffs.

Often though, it is the smarter agent, not the stronger one, who catches the bad guy.

"It is brains, not just brawn," said Violet Szeleczky, a senior Drug Enforcement Administration agent based in Houston. "You have to be able to put two and two together," she said of the twists an investigation takes.

Szeleczky, who oversees the recruiting squad in this region, is hoping to get that message across in order to boost the number of women who might otherwise shy away from a career with the DEA, which is 91 percent male.

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Re: "U.S. can't duck serious issues at southern border," Tuesday Editorials. Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza's pessimism over Mexico's drug cartels is well-founded. However, his solution -- to pour billions of U.S. dollars into a continuation of the Nixon-era war on drugs -- is simply absurd. As long as we continue to treat drugs as a criminal justice matter rather than a public health matter, we will only enrich the drug dealers and impoverish the taxpayers of all nations.

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Re: The letter "Drug dealers are fooling LPD by changing tactics" (A-J, Nov. 22).

I would like to respond by saying I do not appreciate the criticism in regards to the drug enforcement section of the Lubbock Police Department.

In my opinion, this letter was a slap in the face of the officers who lay their lives on the line for the citizens of Lubbock.

The officers cannot catch all of the drug dealers in Lubbock, as there are too many, but they are catching some one drug bust at a time.

Police officers do not receive the appreciation or the credit they highly deserve.

Hope Lewis

Lubbock

[end]

As much as volatile states like Pakistan will remain a top-shelf issue for President-elect Barack Obama, his new national security team must equally put its shoulder into problems afflicting the United States' southern border.

We suggest incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begin her prep work by reading U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza's recent speech to the San Antonio-Mexico Friendship Council. He rightly explained that Mexico's drug cartels wouldn't turn the nation into a killing field "were the United States not the largest consumer of illicit drugs and the main suppliers of weapons to the cartels."

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A substance with an active compound that may be the strongest hallucinogen gram for gram found in nature, according to an article by the New York Times, is currently legal in Texas. Salvia divinorum, or salvia, produces vivid hallucinations in users and should be banned in the state and across the nation.

Salvia has historically been used in Mexico under the supervision of Mazatec shamans in order to have revelations, but in the past 10 years, the drug has become popular for teens and college-aged people around the country. According the Times, studies at college campuses have estimated 7 percent of students have used salvia.

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Another Houston ISD teacher was charged with possession of marijuana Thursday after authorities said they found the drug in his car at school.

[redacted] in north Houston, faces up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine if convicted of the misdemeanor charge. HISD said two teachers at Williams were caught with drugs, but the Harris County District Attorney's Office said only Moseley has been charged.

Since October, at least four other HISD teachers and one custodian - from Whittier Elementary, Woodson Middle, Wheatley High and Worthing High - have been charged with having drugs on school grounds, said district spokesman Norm Uhl.

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Peer Educators recommend setting realistic goals for recovery.

In an article dated March 15, 2007, USA Today reported "nearly half of America's 5.4 million full-time college students abuse drugs or drink alcohol on binges at least once a month." That article was based on a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Closer to home, a 2005 Texas Department of State Health Services survey of college students revealed 84 percent of college students had an alcoholic beverage at least once, 78 percent in the past year, and 66 percent within the past month. Binge drinking was admitted by nearly 30 percent of those surveyed. Alcohol was cited as the most widely used substance.

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Newsflash to the Lariat editorial board: banning salvia will do far more harm than good, if it really does any good at all. Crack, LSD, marijuana, heroin, ecstacy, and other Schedule 1 drugs are all illegal in most of the United States; yet, they are still widely-used and readily-available in many areas.

Furthermore, making salvia illegal will just lead to its sale on the black market, which I guess is good for those of us who like an increase in crime, a greater burden on our prison system and the potential for more extortion, exploitation and violence for the residents of Texas.

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Regarding criminalizing salvia: It's one more thing to let bad people sell on the black market and get rich. It's one more thing for pushy "pyramid scheme" drug dealers to hand out free to naive teens to introduce them to, when they likely never would have tried it absent arm-twisting. Charming.

People always reach the hardest for that which is just out of reach. We've been fighting the war on drugs since LBJ, and they're more prevalent than ever. You can even buy them in prisons that are guarded 24 hours a day.

When will we ever learn?

Brett Bolte

Waco

[end]

Before seeking to expand a long-failed drug crusade with a new salvia divonorum ban, people like state Rep. Charles "Doc" Anderson, R-Waco, should consider the results that America's war on drugs has produced in the last 94 years.

When drug prohibition began, there was no such thing as a "drug crime." Addicts could buy morphine, heroin, cocaine and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. There was no need to rob, whore and murder to satisfy addictions.

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Waco's State Representative Charles "Doc" Anderson appeared on yesterday's Dr. Phil episode on risky teen behavior to share his expertise on salvia, a popular hallucinogenic drug.

On the show, Anderson told of his efforts to criminalize salvia in Texas, while helping warn a mother who provides the drug to her teenage son of the consequences usage can have on developing adolescents.

"I hope my appearance on the Dr. Phil show will help to educate people on the dangers of salvia and the nationwide exposure will help lend more credibility to our testimony," Anderson said.

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State Rep. Charles "Doc" Anderson, R-Waco, is to appear on the "Dr. Phil" show today after he filed legislation Monday that would ban the increasingly popular hallucinogenic drug Salvia.

Anderson, who is on the show to discuss the drug's effects on young people and their families, has been pushing to have Salvia placed on a list of controlled substances for more than a year and a half.

Also known as "Diviner's Sage" and "Magic Mint," the active ingredient in Salvia, Salvinorin-A, which is found on the leaves of the herb Salvia divinorum, produces a psychedelic high that lasts anywhere from minutes to hours after it is smoked.

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Texas lawmakers propose health program for children, mandatory ultrasounds for women who seek abortions.

State lawmakers filed hundreds of would-be laws on Monday, including proposals to create a health insurance program for children who have a parent paying child support, strengthen background checks for people who work with the elderly, and require women who seek an abortion to first get an ultrasound.

It was the first day bills could be filed for the legislative session that begins in January.

Although filing a bill is just the first step in a long process (of about 6,200 bills introduced in 2007, only about 1,500 passed) the filings offer a glimpse of what lawmakers will be debating.

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A veteran customs inspector recently arrested in Texas on drug charges helped traffickers smuggle about 3,000 pounds of cocaine into the country over five years, according to a court document filed last week.

The inspector, Jorge A. Leija, 43, allowed smugglers to drive cars loaded with cocaine through his entry lane at the Eagle Pass border crossing, about 140 miles southwest of San Antonio, without inspection, according to testimony by an unnamed Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

Mr. Leija was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from January 2001 to October 2006, the agent said at a bail hearing on Thursday in Federal District Court in Del Rio, Tex.

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Regarding your story of Oct. 29 reporting the seizure of $118,000 in an I-40 traffic stop: Chalk up one more highway robbery to the mis-named "war on drugs."

Let's be real; this is an industry living off of the pretense of protecting us from ourselves. If you deal in or carry cash, beware! Ninety percent of the cash in circulation has drug residue embedded in it and once it is seized, it is your problem to hire the lawyer and prove your innocence.

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Local schools have been displaying banners and red ribbons in observance of Red Ribbon Week. The National Family Partnership organized the first nationwide Red Ribbon Campaign in honor of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, who was tortured and killed in 1985 while investigating drug trafficking in Mexico.

To honor his memory and his fight against illegal drugs, his friends and family wore red badges made of red satin. From there, coalitions of caring parents adopted red ribbons as their symbol to reduce the demand for drugs in their communities.

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