In modern medicine, it is only common sense that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is well understood by patients and doctors alike that it is much more effective and cheaper to prevent a disease, or catch it in its early stages, than to treat it once it has become a serious health risk.

Although there is now an overwhelming expert consensus that drug and alcohol addiction are medical conditions, just like breast cancer or diabetes, our approach to prevention has not caught up to the medical science.

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Campaigning for president in the liberal oasis of Madison, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont rose to the defense of marijuana.

Critical of the nation's war on drugs, Sanders said the lives of millions of Americans have been "ruined" because they got a police record for possessing marijuana.

"Today, under the federal Controlled Substance Act, marijuana is listed in the same Schedule I as heroin. That is nuts," Sanders declared March 26, 10 days before he defeated Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin's Democratic primary.

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Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm has announced he is running for re-election ("Milwaukee County DA Chisholm announces re-election bid," April 19).

To kick off his campaign, he hosted a campaign fund-raising event on April 20, or 4/20, a day heralded by the movement for reform of our country's marijuana laws. Perhaps Chisholm can celebrate both his campaign kickoff and 4/20 by announcing that his office will no longer criminally prosecute marijuana possession cases or distribution cases involving small amounts of marijuana.

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News reports on the rapidly rising use of Narcan by Wisconsin first responders to revive people suffering opiate overdoses show the state's opiate crisis is continuing to escalate. This comes despite passage of many laws over the last two sessions intended to address this situation.

Wisconsin could address both the issue of opiate abuse and the huge need for safer pain medications by passing state medical cannabis legislation.

In Maine, where medical cannabis was legalized by voters in 1999, work has begun on adding "addiction to opiates and drugs derived from chemical synthesis" to the list of qualifying conditions that may be treated with medical cannabis.

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Dane County Pushing Municipalities to Lower Fines for Pot Possession

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi has seen how possession of a small amount of marijuana can affect families in vastly different ways.

"A young person would get charged with possession of marijuana, and their family would be facing a fine of over $1,000; that obviously comes down disproportionately on people living in poverty, and that can really set them back," Parisi says. "Fines wouldn't get paid, which would make it difficult or impossible for young people to get a job."

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A sentencing hearing for a Portage woman charged with reckless homicide overflowed with emotional testimony, culminating in a decision in which the judge lamented the court being ill-equipped to deal with such cases in the absence of a drug treatment court.

[name1 redacted], 27, of Portage, was accused of first-degree reckless homicide as a party to a crime in connection with the August death of [name2 redacted], 27, of Lodi.

The Columbia County Sheriff's Office responded Aug. 18 to a Lodi-area home for a death investigation.

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Assembly Speaker Says He'll Again Push Bill to Treat Seizures

Madison - Frustrated with last week's failure of a bill to help children with chronic seizures, the head of the state Assembly said he's going to push the proposal as soon as possible next session.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has described himself as a former skeptic who's become a convert to the possibilities of socalled CBD oil, a strictly controlled drug sometimes used to treat severely epileptic children with few other medical options.

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Scott Fitzgerald had indicated he was in favor of a bill to help kids prone to seizures get the medicine they need. So was a majority of the state Senate. But the apparent support of the Senate majority leader and his colleagues wasn't enough when three top Republicans - Senate President Mary Lazich of New Berlin and Senators Duey Stroebel of Cedarburg and Leah Vukmir of Wauwatosa - blocked it.

So Fitzgerald derailed a floor vote on the legislation earlier this week by scheduling a hearing on the bill and then canceling it. Bills can't be brought to the floor if a hearing is pending. Fitzgerald used the end around to protect his colleagues. Democrats countered by attempting to take a two-thirds vote to override the rule, but Fitzgerald quickly adjourned the Senate before a vote could be held.

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Online Voter Registration, Other Measures Approved

Madison- In a final marathon of voting, the Senate adjourned Tuesday by sending Gov. Scott Walker a bill to allow people to register to vote online and by blocking a proposal to make it easier for parents to get a drug to treat child seizures.

Senators also approved a bill that would prevent up to $5 million in property tax increases by public schools outside Milwaukee that lose students to voucher schools.

Also Tuesday, the Senate passed a different version of a bill on high-capacity wells than one the Assembly approved last month. That appeared to kill the measure since the Assembly has already ended its work for the year.

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To the editor,

Gary Storck (Monona voters want marijuana to be legal, Mar. 3, 2016) exposes another achievement of government-subsidized prohibitionist discrimination in a country where the prevalence of discrimination is undeniable. And make no mistake; bigots orchestrated cannabis (marijuana) prohibition from the beginning as an act of racism, greed and control. A sane or moral argument to force the black market to continue regulating the relatively safe, extremely popular God-given plant cannabis doesn't exist.

Stan White Dillon, Colo.

[end]

Thursday's letter "Listen to the people about marijuana" reminds me how difficult it was for Colorado citizens to cleanse ourselves of cannabis (marijuana) prohibition.

If it weren't for the initiative process, the sky would still be falling in. Cannabis prohibitionists used every historically discredited lie, half-truth and propaganda they could muster, and then we voted. Like Colorado, the majority of Wisconsin citizens also support ending cannabis prohibition. But without the initiative process available to voters, government subsidized cannabis prohibitionists will continue ignoring citizens.

A sane or moral reason does not exist to continue punishing and caging responsible adults who use the relatively safe, extremely popular, God-given plant as described on literally the very first page of the Bible.

- -- Stan White, Dillon, Colorado

[end]

The Monona Public Safety Commission forgot two important things in its flawed vote to not reduce pot fines.

In 2010 and 2014, the Dane County Board placed cannabis-related advisory referendums on county ballots. In 2010, county voters supported legalizing medical cannabis with 76 percent of the vote. And in Monona, voters gave it an even larger edge with 78 percent in favor.

In April 2014, Dane County voted in favor of legalizing adult use of cannabis with 65 percent support. Monona again exceeded the county with 67 percent in favor.

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But Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Others Weigh Getting in Business

Nothing kills a buzz like the sight of federal agents seizing tens of thousands of marijuana plants from a tribe's reservation.

One year ago, a wave of euphoria swept Indian country when the U.S. Department of Justice released a memo that many read as the feds giving the nation's more than 560 tribes an unrestricted green light to grow and sell marijuana on their reservations - even in states such as Wisconsin where weed remains illegal.

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China has nearly 1.4 billion people - four times as many as the United States' 321 million.

So, does the U.S. really incarcerate more people than China (and Russia, too)?

That is the claim from Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joe Donald, who is challenging recently appointed state Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley in the spring 2016 election.

State appeals court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg, who was a candidate for the high court in 2011, and Madison attorney Claude Covelli also are running.

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The Ho-Chunk Nation may look to legalize marijuana on its tribal lands.

The tribe's electorate voted in favor of the move at a Saturday General Council meeting by a 2-1 margin. Votes at the annual meeting of tribal members are not binding, and the tribe now is studying the legal implications of the possible policy change.

"The vote overturns previous policy refusing to legalize marijuana. During the session, tribal members spoke of the health benefits and that drug addiction already a problem in the communities," said Collin Price, the tribe's public relations officer.

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Considering the article in Wednesday's paper "State rep plans anti-heroin bills," if Rep. John Nygren really wants to curtail opiate abuse in Wisconsin, he should consider sponsoring legislation legalizing the medical use of marijuana.

Research recently published by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research found that states that allow patients to access medical marijuana through dispensaries have reduced rates of opioid addiction and overdose deaths.

In addition, a 2014 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that enactment of statewide medicinal cannabis laws is associated with a 24.8 percent lower state-level opioid overdose mortality rate.

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Members Must Now Design Operation on Reservation That Avoids Raids, Arrests

Now that Menominee tribal members have told their legislators to legalize marijuana, the difficult task begins of designing a profitable weed operation that does not result in the tribe or its customers getting busted.

"Tribes are treading on very dangerous grounds" when it comes to growing and selling marijuana, warned Dorothy Alther, director of California Indian Legal Services. "If I was representing tribes out there (in Wisconsin) I would say it might not be such a good idea."

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Seeking Revenue, Tribe Weighs Legalizing Use

Still burning from the January rejection of its long-sought Kenosha casino, leaders of the Menominee tribe will find out this week whether tribal members want to tap a new vice to help it find economic bliss - growing and selling marijuana.

The approximately 9,000 members will vote Wednesday and Thursday in a two-question advisory referendum asking whether the Menominee should legalize marijuana on their reservation for medical and/or recreational use. If either question is approved, tribal legislators would begin the process of writing ordinances to legalize marijuana on the reservation, located near Shawano, said Gary Besaw, tribal chairman.

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On Thursday, Gallup released a poll showing that 44 percent of Americans have said they've tried marijuana, the largest number the survey has ever recorded.

This isn't too far off from what other polls have found (this Pew Research Center poll pegged the number at 49 percent), and given that people are being asked to admit to behavior that is illegal in most places, the true number is almost certainly higher.

So we're past the point where most American adults have tried pot, which helps explain why support for legalization has also become a majority position.

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Before he tried marijuana, he thought of trying suicide. Heavy drinking hadn't helped. Nor had various pills prescribed by Veterans Affairs doctors. He was still angry, still depressed, still could not sleep.

But he found that marijuana helped. It took the anger and depression away. It took the sleeplessness away. Most of all, it took the 11-year-old boy away.

PFC Jared Hunter never knew the boy's name. He was just some Iraqi kid who liked to hang around the Army base outside Baghdad. "He didn't really speak English or nothing. He would just kind of follow us around and would point things out or tell us if there was somebody there who shouldn't have been." The soldiers adopted him as a mascot. Hunter bought him a soccer ball.

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