Texas traffickers hide in plain sight in Colorado with its lax pot laws

Tien Nguyen, 35, is charged in Smith County, Texas with money laundering after allegedly being stopped with $71,900 in cash in a rental car on Interstate 20. Handout

Tien Nguyen, 35, is charged in Smith County, Texas with money...

Three packages were mailed one after another, each shipped from the same Colorado post office to the same Houston business in the name of the same fictitious person.

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Businessman Has N. Texas Town in Sights for Facility to Produce Oil to Treat Epilepsy

GUNTER - A cotton gin that sat empty for decades in this small North Texas town could be filled next year with the first cannabis plants legally grown in the state. Jae S. Lee/Staff Photographer Patrick Moran, president and co-founder of the Texas Cannabis Industry Association, aims to plant Texas' first legal cannabis plants in Gunter. A statute enacted last year paves the way for cultivation of non-psychoactive cannabis to produce CBD oil for treating people with severe epilepsy.

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Regarding "Dangerous drugs" (Page A14, Thursday), the editorial takes note of illogical marijuana laws in our state, while those laws sidestep kush, which is actually a more dangerous substance. Four states have already legalized the use of marijuana, and all is well.

Texas needs to move forward on this issue as well as the issue of casino gambling. Other states are enjoying the freedoms related to both of these issues, which should be individual choices.

We are stuck in an outdated mode, based on falsehoods and overly conservative and religious mores. We need to focus our laws and enforcement efforts on things that really matter.

G. Gratzer, Sargent

[end]

Legislators who want to expand the use of medical marijuana in Texas - - as well as the green-seeking entrepreneurs who could benefit financially from more state-approved, pot-derived treatments for what ails Texans - might be able to lean on a new study to bolster their argument when the Legislature convenes in January.

State senators and Texas House members undoubtedly will be looking for ways to save money next session, especially since the price of oil has dropped into an abyss, taking with it much of the state's oil-based tax revenue. They'll cut programs. They always do. But they also will search for savings.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection will pay $475,000 to a New Mexico woman who accused agents in Texas of forcing her to undergo illegal body-cavity probes.

The woman was at an El Paso port of entry when a drug-sniffing dog jumped on her, according to court filings.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Texas and New Mexico announced the settlement Thursday. Customs and Border Protection officers will also be required to undergo additional training.

A lawsuit filed in 2013 said the woman - a 54-year-old U.S. citizen referred to only as Jane Doe - was "brutally" searched by customs agents in December 2012.

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Messages of peace and love are briefly comforting after tragedies like those our country and city have recently experienced. But society needs to face harsh realities, beginning with stemming drug use.

Through people I know well, I've seen marijuana become a gateway drug for some and a substance that can change personalities over many years. Legalizing recreational marijuana usage is absurd since most ingest it for one reason: to alter mood/ thoughts. That doesn't put anyone in a good mind-set to interact with law officers, ever.

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Group Hosting 'Lake and Bake' Event Questions Need to Close the Entire Park

The shutting down of an event hosted by marijuana legalization advocates Sunday at Lake Grapevine had nothing to do with the group's beliefs, Grapevine city officials said.

The third annual Lake and Bake was shut down because DFW NORML didn't acquire a special events permit needed to host a gathering of that size, Grapevine Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Mitchell said.

"Who they are had no bearing on why the event was closed off. They could be pushing beef jerky for all I know," Mitchell said. "It has nothing to do with who they are or what they represent. None of that is relevant."

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Mark Davis: Those Pushing for This Don't Know What It Does to Neighborhoods

Looks like this is my year for congratulating the Dallas City Council, although I do not pretend that the horseshoe is bending toward my worldview.

First they found a way to reject the absurdity that there was a First Amendment obligation to host a porn convention on city property. Now, at least for the moment, they are resisting widespread urgings to loosen marijuana laws.

As some state-level experiments plod forward with outright pot legalization, the Dallas issue involved ratcheting pot-possession penalties down from a jailable offense to a mere ticket.

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Within GOP, Sentiment Appears to Be Growing to Allow More Remedies.

Is Texas ready to embrace expanding medical treatments from marijuana?

Some state elected officials - along with some eager entrepreneurs - would like to see more allowable uses of the controversial plant when the 2017 legislative session comes around.

Last session, many Capitol observers were stunned when both chambers passedSenate Bill 339 and Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law. The law - which was authored by now-departing state Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, and sponsored by state Rep. Stephanie Klick, R-Fort Worth - allows patients who suffer from a rare form of epilepsy to be treated legally with cannabidiol, or CBD as it is better known.

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High Court: Civil-Asset Forfeiture Is Not Subject to Criminal Court Rules.

Law enforcement can seize private property that was used in the commission of a crime, even if evidence of wrongdoing was illegally obtained by police, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.

Because the process of seizing property takes place in civil court, property owners aren't protected by criminal court rules that call for evidence to be tossed out if it was obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure, the unanimous court ruling said.

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Ceo Expects Texas to Be Major Center for a Strain of Cannabis That Can Ease Epilepsy Without Getting Patients High

About 60 miles north of Dallas, amid green fields in the town of Gunter, population 1,486, Texas Cannabis CEO Patrick Moran has optioned to buy a former cotton gin, where he plans to grow the Cannabis sativa plant, known more commonly as marijuana.

The businessman and attorney is positioning himself at the forefront of what he estimates will be a $900 million a year industry in Texas - - the recently legalized market for treating intractable epilepsy with a strain of marijuana that eases seizures without getting patients high.

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Last week, the House of Representatives approved what The New York Times described as "a mountain of bills addressing the nation's opioid abuse crisis." The 18 bills passed "by huge bipartisan margins."

A flurry of legislative activity like this usually materializes when the drug problem it targets is already receding. That seems to be the case with the so-called opioid epidemic, notwithstanding the fresh attention attracted by the recent death of Prince, which may have involved prescription painkillers.

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), nonmedical use of opioid analgesics such as oxycodone and hydrocodone peaked in 2012 and has since dropped below the rate in 2002. Although the recent decline in prescription painkiller use was accompanied by an increase in heroin use, total opioid use was still lower in 2014 than in 2012.

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Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently restored the right to vote for 206,000 citizens in his state, many of whom had completed their sentences decades ago. One of them, Terry Garrett, had struggled with homelessness and drug addiction, receiving multiple felony convictions, before turning her life around. She's now sober, a grandmother, and helps people facing addiction. Told that she could now vote, she said, "Finally, someone sees past what we did."

As the 2016 presidential race heats up, it's clear that the outcome will affect the course of the nation for some time to come. Yet nearly 6 million Americans will not be at the polls this November. It's not that they don't care about the outcome of the election, but rather, they're prohibited from voting due to a current or previous felony conviction.

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Forty-one states have legislation that permits medical marijuana in some form. However, the law in Texas is not considered functional because it requires a physician to prescribe marijuana. Since marijuana is illegal under federal law, doctors can't prescribe it. They can only recommend it to patients.

Louisiana's law had the same flaw, but the state's House of Representatives just voted on new legislation that should correct this problem.

In April, Pennsylvania became the latest state to pass medical marijuana legislation, which will take effect this month. And recently, Ohio's House of Representatives passed a plan to permit medical marijuana in the state.

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Some 100 people marched in San Antonio's second annual "marijuana march" to build support for grass-roots efforts to ease Texas marijuana laws and decriminalize pot use.

The event was hosted by the local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Jesus Ramirez marched with a sign emblazoned with a cannabis plant and the words "Don't Fight. Make It Right. Legalize."

"I'm here because I think we need more compassion for people who are suffering," said Ramirez, 44, a former glazier who also uses cannabis to reduce pain from a neck injury that forced him to retire five years ago. "Marijuana helps people cope. Why would anyone be against that?"

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Re: =93Texas tops in use of civil asset forfeiture =AD And it's likely to get worse, Audrey Redford says,=94 Monday Viewpoints.

Thanks to Redford for her excellent column and to The News for continuing to call attention to the most corrupting influence in law enforcement =AD civil asset forfeiture.

The injustice of police taking property without due process has not gone unnoticed.

Right on Crime, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the American Conservative Union Foundation and the Prison Fellowship, has given a series of seminars on the subject. It says civil forfeiture endangers individual rights and the integrity of law enforcement.

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In just over a decade, Texas law enforcement collected more than half a billion dollars, $540.7 million, in cash and personal property from Texans suspected of breaking the law. Known as civil asset forfeiture, this legal practice leaves average Texans vulnerable to having their assets seized by police, no trial or proof of guilt necessary.

Texas is among the worst states in the nation for civil asset forfeiture abuse. The Institute for Justice's "Policing for Profit" report gave Texas a D+ and said the state leads the nation in average annual forfeiture proceeds, at roughly $41.6 million.

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As we prepare to vote for the next president of the United States, it is important for voters to carefully consider the character of the candidates. Why? Because although a presidential term only lasts for four years, a president's policies and legacy can cause devastation for decades.

Case in point: President Richard Nixon and the "War on Drugs."

Nixon's drug policies that began in the 1970s seeped into our nation's education policy 20 years later; today it funnels hundreds of thousands of youths from schools into prison.

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Kingpin's Plea With U.S. Triggered Years of Bloodshed Reaching All the Way to Southlake Zetas Saw Gulf Cartel Leader As Traitor, Declared a War That Has Killed Thousands of People

A plea agreement between a Mexican drug kingpin and the U.S. government helped generate a violent split between two drug cartels that led to the deaths of thousands of people in Mexico and along the Texas border, a Dallas Morning News investigation has found.

A masked gunman fired multiple times at Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa with a 9 mm handgun through the passenger window of his Range Rover at Southlake Town Square in May 2013. Three Mexican citizens were arrested more than a year later and charged with stalking, and aiding and abetting in the hit.

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War on Drugs, for Example, Was an Assault on Black People, Robyn Short Says

Whoever said, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" must have been on the receiving end of a very kind-speaking stick thrower. Words matter. Too often in American politics, words are used as weapons that can cause social damage that takes far longer to repair than any broken bone.

Democrats and Republicans both use language to dehumanize, vilify and separate the people of this nation. By doing so, they indirectly foster a culture that permits harmful actions against "the other," and even deems such action morally correct.

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If the Dallas City Council is unhappy with the recent crime spike, perhaps voting for the cite-and-release marijuana policy that failed last week could help keep officers on the streets working on eliminating violent crime.

In 2014, 700,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana law violations and 620,000 of those violations were possession. Why are we putting resources to arrest individuals for a crime that is nonviolent?

Dallas City Council had its chance to be proactive toward reducing violent crime by reducing the penalties for a nonviolent one. Now the council members who voted "nay" on the cite-and-release policy would rather blame Dallas Police Chief David Brown for an issue they could have helped solve.

William Dominguez,

Dallas/Lakewood

[end]

Re: "Straight talk about heroin - We've got the epidemic all wrong, Maia Szalavitz says," March 20 Points.

All of the dangerous myths about heroin that Szalavitz points out are important. The drug war is built on lies and misconceptions. It is most important to discredit the myth that "Tough love is the only thing that works. Programs that distribute clean needles and overdose-reversal drugs prolong addiction."

Addition is most often an adaption to overwhelming trauma. The majority of injection drug users were abused as children. This can cause lifelong self-hatred. Even the man who started drug prohibition, Harry Anslinger, admitted it: Addicts often "grow up in homes that are not homes, with parents that are not parents, [so] they seek escape. Girl or boy, this is a familiar pattern."

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The Dallas City Council made a mistake in snuffing out Dallas County's cite-and-release pilot plan to ticket low-level marijuana possession offenders rather than haul them off to jail. As Police Chief David Brown once conceded - although he ultimately opposed the plan - the idea was "just so damn practical." It would reduce crowding in the Dallas County Jail and allow police to focus on more serious crimes, such as burglaries and assaults, and address concerns such as downtown panhandling. But council members waded into the weeds and failed to navigate issues of collaboration with neighboring jurisdictions and whether to give officers discretion to arrest some offenders. It's disappointing that they lacked creativity or the will to work through these questions.

We hope they' ll try again.

[end]

Misdemeanor marijuana possession will still mean jail time in Dallas. Misdemeanor marijuana possession will still mean jail time in Dallas after City Council members spurned a much-discussed plan to instead issue citations to those caught with small amounts of pot.

Council members on Wednesday got into the weeds of the proposed Dallas County pilot program and possible discrimination concerns before they rejected the so-called cite-and-release plan. Opposition from council member Sandy Greyson and Police Chief David Brown prevailed.

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Grapevine Police Join Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative

Nonprofit Organization Works With Local Police and Opioid Addicts

Treatment Centers Are Better Than Jail

We all learned about the effects of illegal drugs in health class, from TV and parents.

We've watched fictional drug addicts on anything from Orange is the New Black to Elementary.

We all know that drugs are bad, and drug dealers are even worse. We want both off the streets and away from kids.

In those worst-case scenarios, a teenager becomes addicted to drugs. He or she gets arrested for drug possession and then has a criminal record.

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We've Got the Epidemic All Wrong, Maia Szalavitz Says

America's epidemic of heroin and prescription pain reliever addiction has become a major issue in the 2016 elections. It's worse than ever: Deaths from overdoses of opioids - the drug category that includes heroin and prescription analgesics such as Vicodin - reached a high in 2014, rising 14 percent in a single year.

But because drug policy has long been a political and cultural football, myths about opioid addiction abound. Here are some of the most dangerous myths, and how they do harm.

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City's Police Joining Efforts to Treat Addicts Instead of Jailing Them

GRAPEVINE - Imagine a drug user walking into a police station and handing over his drugs and paraphernalia. But instead of police putting the addict behind bars, the would-be criminal is taken to a treatment facility to get help - without any charges being filed.

That's the essence of a new nationwide initiative coming soon to at least one North Texas police department.

Grapevine officials, stung by some drug-related deaths in recent years, said Wednesday that they will soon begin participating in the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, or PAARI. The program takes a more compassionate approach toward drug users by treating addiction as a disease rather than simply a crime.

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Legalization's Coming, They Say, and So Are the Potential Opportunities

FORT WORTH - There was a day when you'd have been considered under the influence to think that Texas might ever legalize marijuana. Lawrence Jenkins/Special Contributor "the 'Green rush' is going to happen," said San Antonio lawyer Daniel Mehler, who stood out in a pot-leaf-patterned suit at the cannabis expo in Fort Worth.

But this weekend, an event dedicated to that very notion drifted into the Fort Worth Convention Center.

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GLOUCESTER, Mass. - Leonard Campanello leans forward. "There's no incentive or coercion that will stop an addict," he says. "This is the only long-term illness on the planet where if the disease presents itself, they kick you out" of treatment.

I met Campanello at the Sugar Magnolias breakfast place on Main Street in downtown Gloucester, where he told me about his amazing offer to drug addicts. It's an offer that will change drug treatment in America, reduce crime, decrease drug-related deaths, drop incarceration and destigmatize substance abuse while restoring the community role of the police. It will save lives and money at the same time. This is a sea change. Before you get the wrong idea, let me assure you that Campanello, the chief of police in this city of 28,000, isn't a reformer. He doesn't look like a reformer. He's a cop, a fact-and-evidence guy. He speaks without hyperbole in a boots-on-the-ground Boston accent. You can't listen to him without having a sense that he is absolutely right. So what was that amazing offer? Last year, on March 5, after a string of fatal overdoses in Gloucester, Campanello made this declaration on the department's Facebook page:

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We anticipate an interesting discussion Tuesday when the City Council considers whether police should be allowed or encouraged to "cite and release" folks whose only apparent offense is possession of a misdemeanor amount of marijuana.

Our opinion: It's high time!

Sorry, we couldn't let that one pass. But don't confuse our partaking of the low-hanging fruit as a case of the munchies. It's a clear-eyed reality check.

Somebody besides the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) needs to say it: The police have more important things to do, the jail is an expensive, finite resource, and the worst, most dangerous thing about possessing a small amount of marijuana for personal use is its illegality.

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Citing and releasing those caught with small amounts is a good idea, William R. Kelly writes

As someone who studies the effectiveness of criminal justice policies, I rarely can applaud a specific policy in Texas. But I could do just that for a new pilot program taking shape in Dallas.

The Dallas City Council is considering a program of ticketing rather than arresting individuals caught in possession of 4 ounces or less of marijuana. The procedure, known as cite and release, involves the police issuing a ticket to the offender, much like the procedure used for traffic violations. The ticket is a promise to appear in court on a particular date and time.

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