Monday's editorial calling for a public health approach to drug use and abuse ("King County budget: Rethink drug laws") was right on the mark. In 2007, Washington law enforcement reported 30,992 arrests for drug offenses, and roughly 85 percent were for possession only. Treating drug use and addiction as a crime is an expensive and ineffective waste of our scarce public resources. We could save millions in criminal justice costs through "pre-booking diversion," which allows police officers to route low-level drug offenders to services instead of jail and the courts. Pilot projects in Seattle have shown promising results in terms of reduced recidivism, safer communities and changed lives. King County can lead by developing and implementing alternatives to the failed "war on drugs." Expanding pre-booking diversion programs throughout the region would be a smart policy that makes good fiscal sense.

Alison Holcomb

Drug Policy Director ACLU of Washington

Seattle

[end]

Regarding your Monday editorial, the drug war is a cure worse than the disease. Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug trafficking. For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime, it fuels crime.

With alcohol prohibition repealed, liquor bootleggers no longer gun each other down in drive-by shootings, nor do consumers go blind drinking unregulated bathtub gin. While U.S. politicians ignore the drug war's historical precedent, European countries are embracing harm reduction, a public health alternative based on the principle that both drug abuse and prohibition have the potential to cause harm.

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The King County Council is beginning its tough conversation about resources. How much less for criminal justice programs? Health clinics? And on and on. This is a government's version of the question every parent faces, "Which child do you love best?" We love them all. Each program has an important role -- and a constituency.But county government does not have the option of spending money it doesn't have. Every budget is balanced at the end of the day.Lisa Daugaard of The Defender Association makes the case that King County will underfund public criminal defense, making the system's maze more difficult for first time, nonviolent offenders.That may be. But this could also be a great opportunity to rethink the enforcement of drug laws by both the city and county governments. What if resources could be shifted from the prosecution of low-level drug crimes into recovery programs? Daugaard argues that fewer misdemeanor drug-related arrests by the city of Seattle, for example, could reduce the need for a new regional jail.One way ahead might be a regional summit that brings together all the stakeholders, ranging from law enforcement to those managing treatment programs. Yes, legislation would be required, and in a hurry, at that. But what if a limited budget forces a new order? This might be an ideal time to swap "drug crimes" (or worse, "war on drugs") with the notion that drug use should be treated in the public health arena.

[end]

The high rate of incarceration is an expensive situation. In this day of strained budgets, perhaps part of our crisis is caused by the tough-on-crime mentality. I wonder how many realize that we incarcerate more than one out of every 100 of our citizens in this country. Many are locked up for non-violent crimes. We do seem to have an addiction to incarceration for all our social ills. To deny someone freedom because they have an addiction or to lock up a person who really needs intensive mental health care doesn't really represent the ideals of America.

When will the public recognize the connection between the government budget challenges and the extremely high cost of our extremely punitive mode of criminal justice?

Lowana Krewson

stanwood, Wa

[end]

Travel aficionado Rick Steves will receive another memorable stamp in his passport Friday, Oct. 24, as he speaks at Western for the first time.

Steves has explored the ends of the globe over the last few decades, writing 30 guidebooks along the way, and he will now pass along his tips of traveling smart and packing light to students and Bellingham residents.

Steves will be leading lectures at three different venues throughout the afternoon and evening, discussing topics from how to travel on a budget, to the problems with the American drug policy on marijuana.

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Educators in West Seattle may have discovered a new way to control 484 wildly cheering children: a burly federal agent wearing camouflage and brandishing a bullhorn.

It was unclear who was having more fun, the kids or the cops, at the culmination Thursday of several days of drug prevention programs at the Holy Rosary School in West Seattle.

The three letter agencies were there: DEA, ICE, FBI. As children wearing red sweaters and blue pants or tartan skirts lined 42nd Avenue Southwest, agents in raid jackets, swat gear and even hazmat suits slapped palms with the pumped up youngsters. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Jodie Underwood -- dressed in black and packing her service revolver -- looked armed and dangerous until she turned toward a bunch of 8-year-olds with a grin on her face and asked: "Are you guys having fun?"

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Competing Candidates Share A Common Theme: It'S Time For A Change.

Containing parts of Kirkland, Redmond, Woodinville, and points east, the 45th Legislative District is hardly a hotbed of radicalism. But the two candidates for one of the district's two House seats share a position well out of the political mainstream: They both advocate wholesale changes to the War on Drugs.

In his time away from the capital, incumbent State Rep. Roger Goodman (D-Kirkland) heads the King County Bar Association's Drug Policy Project, where he works on moving drug policy's focus from crime and punishment to public health. His challenger, Toby Nixon (R-Kirkland), who held the seat from 2002 to 2006 before leaving to run for the state Senate (he lost his bid for an open seat to Eric Oemig), has spoken out in defense of Washington's medical marijuana law and pushed a bill requiring performance audits of drug-enforcement policies.

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Last week's Mercer Island Reporter had an article about doing away with D.A.R.E. I'm not sure what your position is on this program, but I strongly urge you to continue support of D.A.R.E. by filling the D.A.R.E. officer position. The article, in particular, and the concept of doing away with D.A.R.E. in general, are flawed for several reasons.

The article quoted "statistics" concerning alcohol use among high school seniors. Basically, the point was that "if 50 percent of high school seniors have had a drink in the last 30 days, D.A.R.E. isn't working." As any scientist will tell you, this conclusion is flawed because we don't know the percentage of those who would have had a drink (or, worse, would've been dead by now, or be on drugs or be caught drinking and driving, etc.) if D.A.R.E. had not been in place. Bottom line, we can't conclude that D.A.R.E. doesn't work based on statistics without a control.

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In Leandra Reuble's English classroom, a trifold poster board is scrawled with messages and photos warning against the use of crystal meth. One Midway High School student wrote, "Not as glamorous as it looks!" next to a photo of an emaciated man.

Although the board was created several years ago, the next generation of students protested its removal.

"There isn't a drug problem at Midway," Reuble said. "Most who have experienced it have been through rehab and are past it. But they want to get the message to other kids, who don't think it will touch them."

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Timothy Garon Lost Out on a Potential Liver Transplant, in Part Because He Was Using Pot to Ease Hepatitis Symptoms. Now His Son Is Being Charged for Growing the Weed.

In the downstairs section of Lennon Garon's house, the South Snohomish County Narcotics Task Force entered a den draped in black plastic. A combination of fluorescent and high-powered grow lights hung from the ceiling. Below the lights, 69 marijuana plants photosynthesized. The room also contained fans, fertilizer, and a carbon-dioxide generator to support the horticulture project.

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A new rule determining how much pot constitutes a 60-day supply for medical-marijuana users was finalized on Thursday, a decade after Washington voters passed an initiative legalizing marijuana for people suffering from terminal and debilitating illnesses.

The new state rule, which goes into effect Nov. 2, sets the supply limit at 24 ounces of usable marijuana plus 15 plants. Those who need more marijuana to manage their pain will have to prove they need it -- though how they would do that remains unclear.

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Mercer Island drug and alcohol resistance program said to be statistically ineffective

The Island's D.A.R.E. program is facing a dead-end street. City leaders are thinking about abandoning the decades-old program that statistically has failed to prevent alcohol and drug abuse among Island teens.

Former D.A.R.E. Officer Jennifer Franklin recently became the city's new emergency preparedness director, and City Manager Rich Conrad is not planning to replace her with another police officer.

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PORT ORCHARD - A Kitsap County Superior Court judge Friday found a card-carrying medical marijuana patient guilty of growing pot, saying that under the law, the Bremerton man was "not a qualifying patient."

Judge Anna M. Laurie ruled that Robert Dalton's use of marijuana for chronic lower back pain didn't meet the conditions of the citizen's initiative passed by voters in 1998, or any subsequent amendment to it by the Legislature.

His lawyers, Jeanette Dalton and Douglas Hiatt, had "failed to sustain his burden" on the point that his pain couldn't be "unrelieved by standard medical treatments and medications," such as opiate-based painkillers, she said, adding that marijuana for medicinal purposes should be a "drug of last resort."

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Will America's ill-starred "war on drugs" and its expanding prison culture make it into the presidential campaign?

Standard wisdom says "no way."

We may have the world's highest rate of incarceration -- with only 5 percent of global population, 25 percent of prisoners worldwide. We may be throwing hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders, many barely of age, behind bars -- one reason a stunning one out of every 100 Americans is now imprisoned. We may have created a huge "prison-industrial complex" of prison builders, contractors and swollen criminal justice bureaucracies.

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A 16-year-old Running Start student is suing Seattle Central Community College claiming she was kicked out of school after being coerced into signing a statement related to marijuana possession.

The student is asking her suspension be reversed, alleging the statement she signed was false -- and that the college's campus security officers acted inappropriately by forcing her admission of guilt.

The lawsuit, filed late last month on behalf of Whitney Williams and her mother, states that Seattle Central security officers smelled marijuana near Williams and two friends a block and a half from the Capitol Hill campus last April. The officers asked the students to come to the security office, where they found a bag of marijuana in Williams' book bag.

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The State Patrol made 23 arrests during Olympia Hempfest on Aug. 23-24 -- including 10 misdemeanor marijuana-possession arrests and four felony drug arrests, State Patrol Sgt. Ted DeHart said.

DeHart said that by comparison, one person was arrested during this year's five-day Lakefair.

"I think there may be a misunderstanding that if you come down to Hempfest for two days, it's OK to be smoking marijuana, and that's not the case," he said. "We will always enforce the law."

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TUMWATER, Thurston County - More than 100 activists who jammed a state Health Department hearing Monday to protest proposed medical-marijuana limits won at least a minor victory: getting more time to make their case.

Responding to concerns by advocates, Assistant Health Secretary Karen Jensen extended until 5 p.m. Friday the deadline for comments on a proposed rule to limit medical-marijuana users to possessing 24 ounces of cultivated marijuana, six mature plants and 18 immature plants.

The action came at a 2- 1/2-hour hearing in which about 50 patients, doctors and other marijuana supporters blasted the proposal as unfair, unrealistic and unduly influenced by law-enforcement agencies. "We're not criminals. We're patients," said Melissa Leggee, of Spokane. "We just want to be left alone to do what we need to do to survive."

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More Than 100 Weigh in on Proposal at Health Department Forum

What sounds like a lot of marijuana for pleasure isn't enough for medication, more than 100 people at the state Department of Health headquarters said Monday.

The agency was directed by the state Legislature to define how much medical marijuana a patient is allowed to have, something that hasn't been settled since Washington residents voted to allow the product in 1998.

Thomas McCoy of Vancouver, Wash., said he had a stroke more than three years ago and decided to use marijuana to control his pain.

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That pesky First Amendment right of free speech certainly can be troubling at times.

There are some individuals in this community who want to know how Intercity Transit officials can get away with allowing advertisements for Hempfest on city buses?

The answer to the question, of course, is free speech.

Transit officials have realistic limits on the kinds of advertisements they won't accept. An advertisement for Hempfest does not rise to need of censorship, transit officials have said.

It's the right decision.

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Activists irate about a proposed state limit on medical marijuana urged crowds Saturday at Seattle's 17th annual Hempfest festival to rally at an Aug. 25 Department of Health hearing in Tumwater.

It wasn't all peace, love and Hacky Sack at Seattle's 17th annual Hempfest.

Activists irate about a proposed state limit on medical marijuana urged crowds Saturday at the pro-pot festival to rally at an Aug. 25 Department of Health hearing in Tumwater.

Their target is a new state rule that would limit the 60-day supply for medical marijuana to 24 ounces and six mature pot plants.

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