A pregnant drug user locked up in the Salt Lake County jail since Sept. 22 on a special arrangement between the sheriff and a judge was checked into a residential drug treatment program Monday with her newborn girl.

Tammaria Gehring gave birth Sunday night and was released from the hospital the next day to the Volunteers of America Utah.

Gehring's family is hopeful she will shake her addiction, but they worry she'll walk away from the detoxification center and disappear with her child.

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Salt Lake County: The Lockup Wanted To Turn Away A Suspect To Avoid Any Legal Risk; A Judge Just Wants What's Best For Baby

Tammaria Gehring is more than eight months pregnant. Until Sept. 22, when she was locked up in the Salt Lake County Jail, the 30-year-old mother of two was living in a motel room and using methamphetamine.

Were it not for a judge who personally lobbied Salt Lake County Sheriff Aaron Kennard to book her - against Kennard's strict policy not to book pregnant women - Gehring would still be out, possibly doing drugs, despite a felony drug charge and violations of her pre-sentencing release.

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After taking her first full-time job at an alternative high school, CarolAnn Duncan has taken an active interest in drugs. Her students provided her with marijuana, their bongs and joints.

"I think my students taught me more than I taught them," Duncan said. "They said, 'CarolAnn is too stupid and naive, we need to teach her.'"

After working in education for 25 years and seeing what drugs can do to the students she worked with, CarolAnn is perfectly suited for her new job as House of Hope director.

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Strike Force Agent Works To Reach Teenagers Before It's Too Late

OGDEN -- Nearly three years ago, a local teen clung to life.

Randy Lythgoe, an agent with the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force, had been called to investigate the comatose teen's situation.

"When I walked into his room, I didn't have my badge on. I walked through a crowd of teenagers standing vigil in the hallway," Lythgoe said.

"After a few minutes, the young man's father and I walked out of the room and back through the crowd of teenagers. At that point, I had my badge exposed. Half of those kids got up and left as soon as they figured out who I was."

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Question 31 on the Free Application for Federal Students Aid, could be a life changing one -- and no one knows why.

The question asks whether a student has been convicted of the possession or sale of drugs, because as part of Title IV of the Higher Education Act, convictions for the sale or possession of drug make you ineligible to receive educational federal aid. However, few people seem to be aware of it.

The Daily Universe contacted 91 high school students in Utah County and asked them what they knew about the Higher Education Act. Two of the students knew what it was. Of the rest, 82 percent said they knew nothing about it and the remainder either mistook it for Bush's No Child Left Behind Act or didn't answer.

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Title IV of the Higher Education Act is up for reform this year, a law that has reportedly affected more than 160,000 students across the nation.

Sec. 483 of Title IV of the Higher Education Act states "a student who has been convicted of any offense under any Federal or State law involving the possession or sale of a controlled substance shall not be eligible to receive any grant, loan or work assistance under this title ..."

Periods of ineligibility vary, depending on the number of offenses. In general, a student convicted of one offense is ineligible for a year, two offenses marks ineligible for two years and three offenses brings indefinite ineligibility.

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The American Civil Liberties Union announced Monday that it would join in the lawsuit filed against the Utah County Sheriff by a Salt Lake City-based rave promoter whose party was busted on Aug. 20.

The ACLU's Margaret Plane said the sheriff's decision to raid the event with 90 officers, automatic weapons, dogs and a helicopter raises concerns about the First Amendment rights of those in attendance.

Law enforcement has singled out the often clandestine, DJ-driven dance parties as events with the singular intent of distributing and using illegal narcotics. Plane said that view is a generalization that is not fair to those who attend the shows with no intent of breaking the law.

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Why Did Utah Police This Summer Storm A Harmless And Legal Rave With Guns And Dogs, Terrorizing Partygoers? You Don't See Them Busting Down The Gates At Nascar Races Or Concerts By Crosby, Stills And Nash.

Close to midnight on a Saturday evening late this summer, a police helicopter crested over a ridge in a desert canyon near Salt Lake City, descended into a low hover over a private ranch, and lit up the area with floodlights. Below, about 1,000 young people were dancing to electronic music at a legal, long-planned rave. They had no idea the police in the sky were armed to teeth and had them surrounded.

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To the editor:

I'm writing about: "Drug task force celebrates accomplishments on T-shirt" (9-07-05).

Drug task forces are just government bureaucracies. And like all government bureaucracies -- guaranteed to expand. Why? Because heads of the bureaucracies get paid in direct proportion to how many employees work under them, not according to how well they perform their mission.

Throwing more and more money at our drug problem is not the answer. We have been doing this for more than 35 years. The net results are that illegal drugs are just as available today as they were in 1969. The only thing that changes is the name of the evil drug du jour.

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Looking for a way to pat themselves on the back, members of the Cache-Rich Drug Task Force decided the easiest way would be to wear their accomplishments on their back.

Logan City Police Officer Jeff Simmons recently was promoted to sergeant in the department's patrol division, and with the change in duties, left behind his job as a task force agent. As sort of a going-away present, the task force created a T-shirt that lists 100 search warrants the group served from April 2004 to August 2005.

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Kicking The Addiction: The High Number Of Narcotics Cases Points To The Need For Special Drug Courts

Drug-related crimes top the list of those most often prosecuted in Utah.

They accounted for the largest group of felony charges filed in fiscal 2005 - - as well as the top two misdemeanor filing categories. Not far behind: forgery, theft and protective order violations.

Members of the Utah Judicial Council, which sets policy for the state courts, heard the statistics as part of a recent budget planning session.

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CEDAR CITY - Forest Service officials are turning to the grass roots - hikers, hunters, passers-by - to help root out, well, grass. You know, the illegal kind. Pot. Dope. Weed.

Yes, marijuana increasingly is springing up in remote areas throughout the West, including Utah, and federal officers are seeking public help in eliminating the illegal plants from public land.

"A large grow was reported by a citizen last year on the Pine Valley Ranger District [of the Dixie National Forest] just north of St. George," says Special Agent Charlie Vaughn, criminal investigator for the Dixie, Fishlake and Manti-La Sal national forests in southern and central Utah.

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OGDEN -- Some 75 recovering alcoholics and substance abusers took over the bowery at Lorin Farr Park Saturday evening for the 4th annual Ogden Drug Court Alumni Picnic.

About 200 family members and friends joined the gathering with the alumni group, one of the stronger components of the 2nd District Court alternative program for drug abusers.

When the first alumni group of drug court graduates gathered about 41/2 years ago to form the alumni committee, their number was about five.

Typically it takes a year to get through the intensive therapies and testing of drug court to reach alumni status.

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Convicted marijuana users in Cache County are seeing little time, if any, in jail, and rarely go to prison unless their use of marijuana leads them to harder drugs.

However, local statistics conflict with a report released today by the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute, which says the United States today is spending 300 times more on drug control than it did 35 years ago and, partially as a result, there are more people serving time in the U.S. for marijuana-related charges than the total inmate population of eight European Union countries.

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Unless people were there Saturday night, participating in the "rave" party in Spanish Fork canyon, it would be hard for them to draw conclusions as to whether police used excessive force when they busted things up, as party organizers are alleging.

But there can be no question as to whether the health of party goers was endangered by illegal drugs that were circulating, and there can be little question that the event's organizers were sloppy and ill-organized.

Communities worldwide are dealing with the rave phenomenon, which has been en vogue for several years now. Organizers of this event apparently had a permit from the health department and had medical personnel on-hand, but they had not obtained a necessary permit from the Utah County Commission, which is what led police to be suspicious. Police who raided the party found the usual lineup of illegal drugs, ranging from Ecstasy and cocaine to alcohol.

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State Seeks 'Do Not Resuscitate' Order; Preemie's Mom Was Shot To Death

A girl born minutes after her mother was shot to death has tested positive for three types of narcotics, is suffering from brain injuries and is on life support, according to state lawyers.

The lawyers, speaking in a child-welfare hearing Tuesday, asked for a "do not resuscitate" order for the girl, whom medical staff reportedly call "Janie."

Third District Judge Elizabeth Lindsley said she would have to review Janie's medical status before ruling on the state's request and asked the lawyers for a formal written motion.

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Firsthand accounts conflict so starkly that one might wonder whether law enforcement busted two separate events last weekend in Spanish Fork Canyon. Yet the Diamond Fork-area location is among few details confirmed by both the roughly 300 partygoers and about 90 law enforcement personnel who dispelled them at 11:30 p.m. Saturday.

Uprock Records of Salt Lake City promoted the event as an "album-release party" on fliers and Internet sites like www.utrave.org. In addition to live performances by DJ Craze of Miami and Spor from the United Kingdom, the party featured typical highlights like a laser light show, barbecue, oxygen bar and glow sticks.

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Utah County: Sheriff Defends The Actions, Denies Wrongdoing

Partygoers at a rave in Spanish Fork Canyon that was busted by police Saturday night say officers used brutal and excessive force to clear the crowd.

As many as 90 police officers from several agencies, including SWAT members and major crimes investigators, stormed the DJ-driven dance party around 11:30 p.m. dressed in full SWAT gear and holding automatic weapons.

A helicopter announced the police presence as it crested a nearby hill and began shining a spotlight on the outdoor dance area, said 19-year-old Scott Benton of Logan.

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Party's Over: 90 Officers From Several Agencies Cite 60 At The Event, Which Had More Than 400 People In Attendance

About 60 people were arrested Saturday night when police officers busted an illegal rave in Spanish Fork Canyon.

Those arrested were cited on a variety of charges including the possession of illegal narcotics, weapons violations, DUI, illegal consumption of alcohol by a minor, disorderly conduct, assaulting a police officer and drug distribution.

The youngest of those cited was 15 years old, said Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Dan Gilbert.

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'Soft On Drugs' Charge Is Absurd

Nobody wants their daughter taking meth. Nobody wants their son shooting heroin. Not because those behaviors are illegal - though they are and almost certainly always will be - but because that junk kills people. But no parent protects her children by denying that drug abuse exists. Even the most bellicose of the drug warriors will tell you that. And when the anti-drug crusaders condemn such reasonable and realistic efforts as the Harm Reduction Project as somehow being soft on drugs, then it is the drug warriors who are in deep and harmful denial. Harm Reduction advocates know better than anyone that drugs kill people. In many cases it is their own children who have died, or who have come much closer to death than any parent wants to imagine.

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