Attorneys for the city of Yakima and its police union battled in court Tuesday over an arbitrator's decision to reinstate a fired officer in a longstanding case that the union contends was retaliation for its refusal to go along with random drug testing of officers.

Officer Mike Rummel was fired in July 2005 for failing to comply with a disciplinary agreement that followed a series of alcohol-related incidents and contact with a former girlfriend.

The agreement went into effect after Rummel pleaded guilty to negligent driving.

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An arbitrator has ruled that the city of Yakima cannot impose a mandatory random drug testing program on its police officers, handing Police Chief Sam Granato and City Manager Dick Zais a big setback. Seattle arbitrator Mike Beck nixed the proposal because no comparably sized city has random drug testing, and because the city failed to prove that a drug problem existed on the police force or that mandatory testing would deter drug use. It was the one major issue left over from a lengthy contract negotiation.

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Pain advocates feel that governmental limitations on medication will affect patient health care

When Brenda Sutherland stepped up to renew her prescription for her pain medications at a local drug store, she said the pharmacist sneered and made comments about "all of her drugs."

"He immediately copped an attitude," the Puyallup resident said. "He started asking me a bunch of personal questions about my medical history. His job is just to fill prescriptions."

He didn't lower his voice and made his opinion known to all who were in earshot.

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The 15-year-old high-school sophomore speaks in a lifeless monotone as he tells a room full of police officers and school officials that he smokes pot every day, as much as he can.

His eyes are vacant. His voice lacks any emotion. He says he smokes marijuana daily, sometimes at school, and does other drugs, such as cocaine and Ecstasy on special occasions.

There's no reason to stop, he says. Drugs make it possible for him to get through the day.

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Emerald Cross, a cannabis club run by a Port Orchard woman, is closed and its future uncertain after the organization lost its lease.

The club, which dispensed marijuana as medicine to people with physician authorizations, occupied a building in an industrial neighborhood of Seattle. Director Sue Watson located the dispensary in Seattle because she was told by the Kitsap County Prosecutor's Office that the operation would not be tolerated here.

Seattle is, by reputation and law, more accepting of medical marijuana use. Voters there in 2003 passed a measure that makes arresting and prosecuting individuals with less than 40 grams of marijuana the "lowest law enforcement priority."

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Derived From a West African Root, Ibogaine May Be a Pain-Free Drug Detox - but in the U.S. It's Highly Illegal.

They've given you the pills and now they're checking your heart rate - it's skyrocketing - when you see it in the corner of your eye. It could be a caterpillar, a cat, your first bicycle. It's growing, and then there's another - a lion? A tiger? A bear? - and soon that's all you can see. It begins: a kind of "movie" of your life, things you didn't know you remembered, drawn out from your mind like barbed wire. A comedy, maybe; a tragedy, definitely; and yours alone. It will stay this way for a good, long while.

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Lawyer, Probation Officer Call for End to Criminal Penalties.

Voices boomed and passions flared at Keystone Church last Friday night, but God had little to do with this spirited debate. It was drugs that drew over 100 people to the Wallingford church, or rather, the failure of America's war against drugs and a chance to discuss the next step forward for narcotics policy in this country.

The event, orchestrated by Wallingford Neighbors for Peace and Justice, included the showing of a film and a panel discussion that featured several prominent drug policy reform advocates.

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Last week's announcement about the failure of the leading AIDS vaccine candidate developed by Merck & Co. is another in a series of disappointing setbacks in HIV prevention. How we as a global community choose to respond to this news, however, is the real test.

Historically, it has taken decades -- and more setbacks than advances -- from the discovery of a virus or bacteria until an effective vaccine is licensed. Typhoid was discovered in 1884, but there was no vaccine until 1989. Malaria, discovered in 1893, still has no vaccine. The measles vaccine took 42 years to develop.

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The addiction treatment known as Prometa has a knack for spawning nasty disputes and nastier ethical problems. Pierce County -- home of a major experiment with Prometa -- is seeing plenty of both.

The County Council has voted to suspend funding for the pilot project. Executive John Ladenburg has threatened to override that vote with his veto. Rather than wrangling with the council, he should be working to fix the problems that have undermined the program's credibility.

One of those problems has to do with the initial claims of success that came from the Pierce County Alliance, the nonprofit agency using Prometa to treat meth addicts on behalf of the drug court. As The News Tribune's Sean Robinson reports in today's newspaper, the Alliance sloppily and perhaps naively overstated the number of addicts clearly benefited by Prometa.

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Folks in Federal Way are banding together to prevent drug abuse in children who are so young, they may have never even heard of substances like LSD, heroin or cocaine.

The Wonderwood Prevention Coalition aims to prevent future drug use in elementary and middle school children in the area surrounding Illahee Middle School. Parents and PTA members at Enterprise, Rainier View, Lakeland, Sherwood Forest and Panther Lake elementary schools, as well as Illahee Middle School, are involved in the project.

Enterprise has already begun an effort with a cross-age peer mentoring program called Friends Incorporated. Nine volunteers from Illahee come to Enterprise every Thursday during the last hour of the school day and meet with their "buddies," the students who they mentor. Each volunteer works with three younger students.

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Regarding the Wednesday letter, "Legalizing use best way to manage it":

"Our law enforcement agencies cannot solve the problems created by prohibition. We must find another way." While I agree with this statement, the writer's letter is preposterous at best. Law enforcement alone has never been able to significantly stem the tide of smuggled and locally manufactured contraband in the United States. The law of supply and demand will conquer all.

If you accept that we cannot effectively ban the use of illicit drugs by Americans, what makes you think we can "manage" their use to adults only? Alcohol and tobacco are perfect examples of "managed" drugs. Both are available openly and freely to enterprising juveniles willing to ask a simple question, "Hey mister/lady, will you buy something for me?" It happens every day in our communities across this nation. How can we conceivably think that we could manage "through strict regulation and control" marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines or Oxycontin, etc., any better? Prohibition is a strict regulation and control method. Since it doesn't work perfectly, should we throw it out for less restrictive measures?

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Red Ribbon Week is Oct. 23-31. Its sponsor, National Family Partnership, wants to create a drug-free America. They want to keep children, families and communities safe, healthy and drug-free.

We must teach our children not to get involved with addictive, intoxicating, harmful substances such as alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to create a drug-free America. We fool ourselves into believing that the way to achieve a drug-free America is to arrest and punish the criminals and people who supply and use the drugs. But there are too many criminals and too many people.

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Yes, a Washington State Court Ruled in a Drug Case, Costing the Couple Two Cars and Legal Fees.

SEATTLE - As drug dealers go, Thomas Roos was not very crafty. During the summer of 2005, Roos, then 24, was arrested four times in four months, usually passed out behind the wheel in cars loaded with drugs, cash, cell phones, and a drug-dealing ledger.

He was so blatant, in fact, that drug investigators in Snohomish County believed his parents should have yanked the keys to their cars. When the parents didn't, the officers seized the vehicles under drug-forfeiture laws.

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PORT ANGELES - You don't want to be stuck by a used syringe, but you don't want to be stuck with one, either.

Clallam County health officials offer this sharp solution:

If you use syringes to control diabetes, allergies or other medical symptoms, deposit them in an empty 2-liter soft drink bottle.

When it's full, toss it out with your other trash.

Clallam County commissioners Monday considered another way to dispose of needles:

Syringe exchanges that are in place in Port Angeles and next month could open in Forks.

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Steve Sarich had just finished watering hundreds of marijuana cuttings and stepped into the shower in January when he heard a commotion downstairs. He managed to slip on a bathrobe before a cop walked through the door.

It was Roy Alloway, a drug detective from Kitsap County, armed with a search and seizure warrant for Sarich's crop of about 1,500 marijuana plants.

Sarich wasn't surprised. As executive director of CannaCare, a medical marijuana advocacy group in Everett that supplied patients with clippings to grow their own, Sarich thought he might run afoul of the law one day.

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Teenagers think they're invincible.

That's how Tumwater High School senior Brandy Orgill described one of the biggest obstacles to convincing young people to stay clear of alcohol and drugs.

"It's a problem with kids our age," said Orgill, president of the school's new Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) club. "They think it won't happen to them, but in a split second your life can change."

South Sound is no stranger to such life-changing -- and sometimes life-ending -- events. It's been a little more than a year since four local young people died in less than a month in car crashes in which at least some alcohol impairment was suspected.

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OLYMPIA -- An eight-year study of Thurston County's Drug Court found that graduates are less likely than other offenders to be subsequently convicted of a crime.

The study found that the court saved $2.89 million that would have been incurred by putting drug court attendees in jail, prison or by placing them under community supervision.

"We can't keep putting people away forever," said Robert Kirchner of Glacier Consulting Inc.

"There needs to be alternatives to incarceration."

Along with reducing recidivism, drug court also helps offenders by giving them treatment for their addictions.

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The "War on Drugs" is a cheap, race-baiting, election-year talking point for tough-on-crime demagogues, and everybody knows it.

The money and talent we waste on this vapid struggle is bad enough. But it's now threatening to waste a lot of lives as well and doom our fight against theocracy and terrorism in Afghanistan to a humiliating defeat.

Yes, it took five years of relentless lobbying, but the Bush administration has very nearly persuaded the reluctant President Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's embattled leader, to spray the country's illicit poppy fields with massive quantities of herbicides, The New York Times reported last week.

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I have multiple sclerosis. First, let me tell you that I don't use marijuana. I have, however, smoked it before and it did relieve my symptoms, greatly. I have not had any medicine that could help my symptoms as well as marijuana.

I am outraged at the lack of understanding about medical marijuana. I know there are some who misuse the system and I believe that in all walks of life, people use the system for the wrong reasons. But if the government would get involved in legalizing the use of medical marijuana, it would be able to control it much better.

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Last month, Barb Drennen got a reminder of an unforgettable moment 17 years ago.

In 1990, Drennen of Kent and a friend, Barb Richards, both active in foster care work and concerned about the growing number of newborns they saw born to mothers using drugs, launched an ambitious endeavor. They founded the Pediatric Interim Care Center, a facility designed to provide specialized, short-term care to infants whose mothers' prenatal use of drugs left the babies at risk of life-threatening complications.

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