Madison Police Chief Mike Koval came out in support of legalizing marijuana last week.

Below, you'll find some of his expanded comments from an interview with the State Journal in which he endorsed legalizing the drug and using tax revenue from its sale to support drug treatment programs.

The comments came soon after Koval said his department must enforce laws against marijuana because the state prohibits it. Asked how he would like Wisconsin to treat the drug, Koval responded:

"I would like us to see -- much like we've seen in those pioneering states (Washington and Colorado) -- a discussion of decriminalizing it, regulating it, taxing it, and then using the funds and monies generated .. (for) treatment programs, drug courts and other things that go to the core of our more substantive drug users."

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A married couple so far has avoided marijuana charges after providing Baraboo police with doctors' notes and other documentation during an incident in which they were found with a small amount of pot and a smoking pipe during a local political event Saturday.

Baraboo Police Department Sgt. Mark Lee and Det. Jeremy Drexler investigated a report of a dog left in a car during Fighting Bob Fest at the Sauk County Fairgrounds in Baraboo. While speaking with Madison residents Greg and Karen Kinsey about the complaint, the officers reported seeing a marijuana pipe through the car window. Police confiscated it along with a small amount of marijuana found in the car, though the issue involving the pet was resolved.

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Dear Editor: Thanks for publishing Gary Storck's thoughtful letter: "Best help for ALS may be to legalize medical marijuana." I'd like to add that cannabis not only treats ALS and many types of cancer, it can help prevent these diseases.

I strongly suggest the readers read Clint Werner's book "Marijuana, Gateway to Health: How cannabis protects us from cancer and Alzheimer's disease."

Why has our government not informed us about the many health benefits of cannabis? Because research into cannabis' therapeutic effects is blocked by the government due to its classification in the most restricted category of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

Our government can only research and fund research into the potential harms of cannabis, but never any benefits. Is something wrong with this situation? I certainly think so.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

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Dear Editor: The "ice bucket challenge" to raise awareness about ALS is all the rage among politicians these days, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his wife, Tonette.

As there are few conventional treatments for ALS, perhaps the best way to help those suffering would be to instead advocate for legalizing medical cannabis in Wisconsin.

In May, I attended a conference in Portland, Ore., presented by Patients Out of Time, "The Endocannabinoid System and Age-Related Illnesses."

In a presentation on ALS and cannabis, Dr. Gregory T. Carter, a clinical professor at the University of Washington, stated that medical cannabis is "almost custom-made to treat ALS. It dries the mouth up, relieves pain, eases muscle spasms, improves the appetite, and may well have a disease-modifying effect."

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Methamphetamine use is climbing as desperate heroin addicts search for a cheaper way to get high and avoid a fatal overdose.

"Meth has never gone away," said Tom Johnson, who heads a regional drug task force. "We just never gave it enough credit."

Local law enforcement saw meth use rise again in mid-2013 when heroin prices ballooned. Heroin can fetch up to $280 per gram; meth sells for as little as $50 to $100 for the same quantity, said La Crosse police Sgt. Andrew Dittman, who heads the department's narcotics unit.

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A 20-year-old woman stopped breathing and turned blue this week in the Town of Raymond, the victim of a heroin overdose.

Her family dialed 911 just after 4 p.m. Tuesday and dispatchers instructed them in CPR.

Racine County sheriff's deputies arrived, reached for their emergency kits and pulled out nasal naloxone, better known by its brand name Narcan. They sprayed it up the woman's nose. In a few minutes, the woman regained consciousness and was talking with first responders before she was taken to a hospital.

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Police Explain Tactics

Drugs have been around Lodi for a long time, but nearly two years ago, the death of a 17-year-old Lodi teen made the community strikingly aware of its ramifications.

That's when Lodi Police acting chief Scott Klicko said the community rose up demanding police address the issue.

"I don't think the public really knew how much investigating went on prior to Jacob Adler's death, but since then, we have obviously been in the public eye more, as they are expecting us to keep combating it," Klicko said.

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JUNEAU - The Dodge County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved doubling the alcohol and other drug abuse counselors employed by the county. The county will add two more Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse counselors to the Dodge County Human Services and Health Department staff.

Dodge County District Attorney Kurt Klomberg and Human Services and Health Department Director Janet Wimmer addressed the board about increasing the treatment options for addicts in the county.

Opiate and heroin use is a huge problem for the county, Klomberg said.

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When you run a small town head shop, it's no surprise you draw the scrutiny of local law enforcement.

That started at The Smoke Shop in Delavan, in Walworth County, in 2007. The store sells tobacco, smoking accessories, novelties, health drinks, clothing, jewelry, bumper stickers and small foil packages called incense or potpourri, but which drug agents say is meant to be smoked like marijuana.

Officers seized glass pipes and made undercover buys of Mimosa root bark.

Now owners David and Erin Yarmo are facing the biggest crackdown yet. Federal prosecutors have seized $776,000 from two of the couple's bank accounts, along with a parcel of undeveloped land in Walworth County, claiming it's all proceeds or was bought with proceeds of the sale of illegal substances, and therefore constitutes money laundering.

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In 2002, 27 people died of heroin overdoses in Wisconsin. A decade later, the toll skyrocketed to 187 deaths.

Heroin has quickly become the most visible drug on the radar for those who work with addicts and in the state's criminal-justice system. Experts say it is the emergence of this drug that partially accounts for the racial disparities in Wisconsin's drug courts.

"When I look at the racial numbers from 2009 to today, the proportion of African-Americans has gone down as the proportion of heroin addicts has gone up," said Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Ellen Brostrom, who runs that county's drug court.

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Even before Dane County Circuit Judge Sarah O'Brien crunched the numbers, she knew something was amiss. Her strongest evidence: "The courtroom didn't look right when I walked in."

O'Brien, who retired in 2012, was referring to the stark racial disparities in Dane County's drug court. The people in front of her - the ones who had gotten the chance to reduce or avoid criminal convictions in exchange for completing treatment and other programming - - were overwhelmingly white.

In 2012, about one-third of those arrested for drug crimes in Dane County were black, according to the state Office of Justice Assistance. But African-Americans made up just 10 percent of those participating in the county's drug court that year, according to Journey Mental Health, a Madison nonprofit that provides treatment and case management for the program.

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Marinette County, with one of the worst heroin problems in the state, has taken the offensive in its fight against the drug and other opiates.

The county has launched a drug specialty court, similar to one Brown County has been running for five years, but geared specifically to Marinette's unique situation.

In 2013, the county of just 41,610 people had the state's 14th highest number of heroin-related court cases. It led the state from 2008 to 2012 in per capita seizures of heroin by police.

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Three More Suspected Overdoses Locally Last Weekend

Three people died of suspected heroin overdoses within 72 hours last weekend.

According to Kenosha County Medical Examiner Patrice Hall, two men and one woman died of suspected heroin overdoses. The causes of the deaths still need to be confirmed by toxicology, she said.

"When you have three potential overdose deaths over the course of a 72-hour period, that's alarming," Hall said.

Hall would release little detail on the deaths as the cases are still under investigation. However, she said two of the deaths occurred in the city of Kenosha and one in Twin Lakes. The victims were in their 30s and 40s, she said.

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Live music fans gathered near the stage at the Marquette Waterfront Festival in Yahara Place Park a few weeks ago barely took notice of the smell of marijuana smoke in the air. The unmistakable odor is as ubiquitous at east side festivals as ethnic food, jewelry vendors and men with beards.

Along with Colorado, Washington state a=C2=80" which both recently legalized marijuana a=C2=80" and California, where a crick in the neck or

sleeping problems can qualify for a medical permit to buy marijuana, Madison is well known for being lenient on casual pot smokers.

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Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said legislators have done what they can and can't force doctors to prescribe cannabidiol oil. Gov. Scott Walker says it's frustrating, but he's not sure what to do.

These are not the words of leaders. All this was known before the bill was even drafted.

As a lifelong glaucoma patient, I lobbied for the Therapeutic Cannabis Research Act, which state lawmakers passed in 1982. After the act was enacted, state regulators advised me federal approval was needed.

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Doctors in Wisconsin Worried About FDA Provision in New Cannabidiol Law

Madison - Nine-year-old Nicholas Volker asks his mother every day when he'll be able to get the medicine that could end the scores of seizures that shake his body every day.

His disheartened mother, Amylynne Santiago Volker, tells him, "Not yet."

Two months after Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a measure allowing the use of cannabidiol, a marijuana derivative used to treat epileptics without giving them a high, Wisconsinites have not yet been able to access the drug. That's in part because of obstacles written into the legislation at the last minute.

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WAUSAU - If you have a stereotype in mind about who wants to change marijuana prohibition laws, the meeting held Saturday afternoon at the Marathon County Public Library likely would have broken it.

The Northern Wisconsin chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws held its Talking Hemp and Cannabis Tour event there, a two-hour event that was part political action movement, part economic development sales pitch and an all-out rebuke of the political and legal system that has declared the so-called war on drugs.

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Dear Editor: I have suffered from glaucoma and other serious medical conditions since birth. Thirty-five years ago, my ophthalmologist wrote in a letter, "I am familiar with reports that marijuana lowers intraocular pressure in many people who have glaucoma. If marijuana were available for me to prescribe to this patient, I would be willing to do so, in the hope it would adequately control his condition with fewer side effects than the medications currently available."

Eight years earlier, when I had smoked marijuana before a checkup, another eye doctor found my usually highly elevated eye pressures were normal.

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Child Who Inspired Movement for Cannabis-Based Treatment Dies in Her Sleep

Though Sally Schaeffer and her family were successful in legalizing a new form of treatment for seizure sufferers, the change in law did not come in time to help daughter Lydia Schaeffer.

The 7-year-old whose Burlington-based family became the de facto face of cannabidiol legislation in Wisconsin died in her sleep early Sunday morning.

Lydia's story was featured in local and national media because of Sally's efforts to get a new, marijuana-based seizure treatment legalized in Wisconsin.

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Lydia Schaeffer, the 7-year-old girl with a rare genetic disorder whose plight inspired lawmakers to legalize a marijuana extract to treat her condition despite their opposition to medical marijuana, has died. Lydia's mother, Sally Schaeffer, had been lobbying the state legislature to legalize the drug, an experimental extract from cannabis plants known as Charlotte's Web, for use on children with seizure disorders. The lawmakers moved to pass the law in record time and Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed the bill in April. But Lydia, who died in her sleep on Mother's Day, never got a chance to try the treatment because the law's implementation was still being worked out.

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