Colleen McCool is not what most people envision when they think of a pot user.

But at 69-years-old, McCool is just that.

She and her husband live separately on property they own in Stephenville, but what they do still share is a fondness for marijuana, which she says helps them cope with a variety of health issues, including depression.

"I lost a son and it really helped me deal with that post traumatic stress," she said. "It also helps with my knee and back problems. It elevates my mood and makes me not notice the pain as much."

[continues 609 words]

Re: "More charged in A&M death -- 10 now facing drug charges following Frisco teen's overdose," Saturday Metro story.

Anton Gridnev, 19, of Frisco is the latest tragic, preventable drug overdose death to make the news.

College Station Medical Center received two calls from his fraternity house asking what to do when someone has overdosed. The caller asked the

medical center not to call the police because of "substances" at their location. By the time someone finally did, it was too late to save Gridne v.

[continues 146 words]

Re: "Synthetic drugs set tragedy in motion," by James Ragland, Saturday Metro column.

Ragland makes several good points about synthetic drugs. These are powders of unknown origin and composition. Of course, they're dangerous and too often lethal. The best solution is blindingly obvious: Legalize the real things. Marijuana alone has never been shown to cause an overdose death. Estimates of lethal doses of LSD are more than 100 times a typical dose.

Since 1994, Switzerland has given injectable heroin to intractable addicts at clinics. There have been no drug-elated deaths among these addicts.

[continues 125 words]

A woman who alleges Harris County sheriff's deputies held her down for a cavity search in a Texaco parking lot contends her rights were violated in a complaint filed Thursday with the sheriff 's office, her attorney said.

Charnesia Corley, 21, of Spring, alleges deputies violated her Fourth Amendment protections by conducting a vaginal probe in public without a warrant.

In her official complaint, Corley describes the encounter that transpired after she was stopped for a traffic violation around 10:30 p.m. on June 20.

[continues 157 words]

Both Parties Are Right to Call for Sentencing Reform

The U.S. prison gulag is the bitter fruit of the grotesquely expensive war on drugs and decades of reflexive but counterproductive tough-on-crime policies.

The truth is this: Our federal and state prisons incarcerate people at a higher rate than all other major nations - well beyond rates in Russia and China and those under regimes widely regarded as backward and oppressive.

With 5 percent of the world's population, the United States holds about a quarter of the global prison population.

[continues 434 words]

Adios, "El Chapo." You mean to tell me that a notorious Mexican drug lord who was arrested in February of last year and whose net worth has been estimated by Forbes to be about $1 billion, managed to escape from the Altiplano maximum-security prison west of Mexico City in a poor country where many people earn as little as $6 per day?

How did that happen? Take a guess. Money opens doors. But more importantly, in Mexico, it also builds tunnels.

[continues 689 words]

Re: "Assets being taken unjustly - Forfeiture laws give states free hand to seize property of individuals simply on suspicion, say Laura and John Arnold," Tuesday Viewpoints.

As a retired Michigan police detective, I am keenly aware of my profession's desire to "police for profit." As a property room officer, I handled the cash coming in and the sale of mostly $2,000 cars my colleagues seized. Our local prosecutor received 10 percent of all money seized in the county, ensuring political support. How does this work?

[continues 104 words]

Most of us would be outraged by the idea that any government authority could take a person's freedom or property without evidence or due process. That would be contrary to the most basic definitions of liberty that we Texans hold so dear. But this happens all the time in Texas, thanks to a pernicious practice called civil asset forfeiture. Law enforcement can legally seize private property if it merely suspects that the property was somehow used in a crime.

We all agree that crime should not pay. We also agree that if a defendant is convicted, the government should have the right to seize both the assets used to commit that crime and any ill-gotten gains.

[continues 685 words]

Michael Botticelli Explains the Focus on Misuse of Prescription Medication

Michael Botticelli, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, is reorienting the focus of the U.S. "war on drugs" to make Americans more aware of the dangers posed by domestic prescription drug abuse, as opposed to international illicit drug trafficking. He shared his perspectives with Points during a recent visit to Dallas.

In years past, the "drug czar" has tended to focus on issues such as Plan Colombia and fighting international drug cartels. You're taking a different track, almost entirely focused on domestic drug consumption. Why?

[continues 876 words]

Re: "The changing war on drugs - Michael Botticelli explains the focus on misuse of prescription medication," Sunday Points.

Tod Robberson's interview with drug czar Botticelli highlighted a challenge for us at Homeward Bound - addiction, stigma and too little funding for treatment and reducing demand for drugs.

Many of our 5,000 North Texas clients each year are addicted to opiates, a class of drugs including pain medication, as well as heroin. They may have begun with prescribed pain medication, progressed to pills prescribed for others, then often crossed the line to heroin, which is cheaper and easier to get. As people recognize the danger in misusing prescription medications and physicians learn to better recognize signs of addiction, we hope the epidemic will ease.

[continues 98 words]

William J. Bennett and Seth Leibsohn: Not So Fast on Legalizing Marijuana

Twenty years ago, drug dealers were seen for what they were - criminal and dangerous elements in our society. They were shunned by the mainstream. People who sold marijuana were considered losers, in the business of harming our children. Parents warned their kids to stay away from those known to use drugs.

Thanks to the marijuana lobby, what was once scorned is hyped and celebrated - even as the drug has become more potent, with THC, the intoxicating chemical, present at much higher levels than in the 1990s. Dealers run state-sanctioned dispensaries, lobby to further legalize their product and receive positive media coverage when doing so.

[continues 594 words]

Legislature Passed Impressive Array of Reforms

Texas leads the nation in executions. Texas leads the nation in DNA-proven wrongful convictions. Texas is a leader in the rate of incarceration. All regrettable. All true.

What's equally true is this: A bipartisan coalition to improve Texas justice didn't ease up in this year's legislative session. While lawmakers left some important reforms on the table, they did pass an impressive array of bills to make Texas justice fairer, less error-prone and more humane.

[continues 452 words]

Congress to the Justice Department: Don't Mess With Texas' Cannabidiol Oil.

Marijuana may not be deadly, but for decades politicians have avoided it like the plague.

After all, the mere whisper that a candidate isn't "tough on crime" was often enough to sink the next election. But the political landscape has changed, and with sine die in the rearview mirror, Texans may not realize that they just witnessed a minor revolution in the Legislature. On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott made state history by signing the first-ever bill to relax penalties for a marijuana-related substance ("Abbott signs bill allowing medical use of marijuana oil," Page B3, Tuesday). But don't expect the whole state to turn Willie Nelson. The bill only legalizes cannabidiol oil, which helps treat patients who suffer from serious seizures.

[continues 426 words]

Prescription Painkillers Can Prove Deadly, but Alternatives Remain Illegal in Texas.

The days before Thanksgiving should be filled with turkey recipes and touch football, building up to the excitement of the Christmas season. For six people in Harris County, however, those days were their last. Over a period of two days in November 2013, half-a-dozen Houstonians died of prescription drug overdoses ("Pain pill OD data largely unsound," Page A1, April 26).

Drugs kill someone in Harris County almost every day. None of those deaths are due to marijuana. Our laws fail to reflect this public safety risk, and it is time for a change.

[continues 612 words]

I am continually amazed by all the so-called experts moaning that the war on drugs is a lost cause and that nothing has changed in 40 years. This rhetoric spewed by legalizers, libertarians, talking media heads and many in Congress is a tactic that combines emotional capital with fallacious information to seek drug legalization under the guise of liberty, capitalism and countering racial bias.

Those of us who have challenged those assertions with facts that prove otherwise have routinely been attacked professionally and personally, accused of nefarious motives for our positions. I have often found these responses laughable while at the same time sad, because supposedly reasonable and intelligent people are hell-bent on destroying the next generation of Americans.

[continues 1062 words]

There's even an organized group of us who are fighting to end the drug war every day. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is an organization of criminal justice professionals who want to end marijuana prohibition for the same reasons that alcohol prohibition failed us in the 1920s - violent criminal enterprises become obscenely wealthy, and corruption is bred into the ranks of even the most honorable police departments.

"Controlled substance" is a bit of a misnomer. Prohibiting marijuana is simply living under the impression that prohibiting a drug, and creating ever-increasing punishments for it, will deter people from using it.

[continues 183 words]

Regarding "Wise counsel" (Page B8, Thursday), Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland is to be commended for speaking out against marijuana prohibition.

There are positive aspects to legalization that bear repeating. New research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that states with open medical marijuana access have a 25 percent lower opioid overdose death rate than marijuana prohibition states.

This research finding has huge implications for states such as Texas that are grappling with prescription narcotic and heroin overdose deaths.

[continues 96 words]

Texas Young Republicans, a group affiliated with the state GOP, is publicly backing legislative efforts to decriminalize marijuana possession.

More than three-fourths of the group's membership support decriminalizing possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and removing fines that can be levied, according to a survey the group conducted.

The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee discussed proposals late Wednesday night that would reduce the penalties for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and one bill that would legalize it altogether.

[continues 266 words]

Regarding the Amarillo Globe-News article (Drug policy creates local outcry, March 29, amarillo.com) for the moment, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Daniel Hawthorne hides behind the shield, asserting, "I don't have the authority to make judgment calls. That's for a judge to do, not me. That's for a jury to do." Hawthorne's comment is regarding cannabis (marijuana) laws, but in reality, law enforcement agencies and their unions fight to perpetuate cannabis prohibition.

I remember police saying 40 years ago that they don't make the laws - - they just enforce them, and if you don't like the laws, change them. Now it seems a cop's job description is to perpetuate cannabis prohibition. A sane or moral argument to cage responsible adults who use the God-given plant cannabis doesn't exist.

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

[end]

After Legalization, Pot Traffickers Will Diversify, Says Megan Mcardle

I've long supported drug legalization for many reasons, but like many other advocates, I consider the reduction of violent crime to be the main benefit. Deprived of the ability to enforce contracts through the relatively peaceful legal process used by other markets, black markets are accompanied by high levels of violence: gangs fight for territory, enforce business agreements and try to defer defections.

The more profitable the black market is, the more incentive there is to use violence to protect your profits, which may be one reason that the introduction of crack cocaine was accompanied by such a huge increase in violent crime. Legalizing drugs cuts into the profits and gives industry players legal means to settle their disputes, so in theory, this should reduce the prevalence, and the brutality, of violent gangs.

[continues 496 words]