Regarding Sally Satel's review of "Drug Use For Grown-Ups" by Carl L. Hart, neuroscientist and professor of psychology at Columbia University (Bookshelf, Jan. 14): I'm a 44-year-old male who is 15 years into a 25-year sentence for shooting a man four times in a cocaine deal that went sideways. I've been selling and using drugs since I was 12 years old. All three of my uncles are dead from opiate-related deaths. My childhood best friend overdosed from heroin in 2017. Setting aside the arguments that include freedom of choice and putting a dent in the profits of drug cartels, I attempt to look at drugs in a more nuanced way. [continues 113 words]
Dear editor, Having one time been homeless due to circumstances beyond my control, I am quite upset by a few narrow minded people on the Courtenay council. To me this is a mean-spirited action against low-income people who are trying to live on very limited budgets and the owners of Maple Pool should be complimented for their efforts to provide places for these people to live. I firmly believe that the Courtenay council should be dealing with the local RCMP on a another more important and in essence a life-saving matter. [continues 191 words]
According to the News Sentinel, Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, speaker of the state Senate, advocates drug testing for people who essentially receive government money, and state Sen. Stacey Campfield of Knoxville is said to agree with this and to push for such legislation. One assumes this means that Tennessee legislators who receive compensation from the state will also be included, as well as all state employees. One also can't help wondering if drug-testing companies may not also be supporting this idea. I am sure the state senators in favor of instituting this intrusive and costly testing would want to participate in it as recipients of compensation from the state. Virginia M. Jones Oak Ridge [end]
Cannabis Issue: Medical Cannabis Industry Thrives Even As the Economy and Legalization Movement Sputter CANNABIS When we did our first Cannabis Issue a year ago, the Bay Area's medical marijuana industry was booming, and there was high anticipation that California would soon legalize weed for everyone. Proposition 19 divided even those who fully support decriminalizing cannabis - partly because the existing system was working so well in San Francisco and many other cities, so people were wary of an uncertain future - and voters rejected the measure in November. [continues 695 words]
San Francisco's Foodies Are Bringing New Tastes and Sensibilities to Eating Marijuana CANNABIS Marijuana edibles have come a long way in a short time. Just a few years ago, the norm was still brownies of uncertain dosage that tasted like eating weed, right down to the occasional stem or lump of leaf, served in a wax paper envelope. But now the foodies have gotten into the game, producing a huge variety of tasty treats that are incredibly delicious even before the munchies kick in. [continues 1613 words]
Editor: At a time when researchers are scouring the rainforest in search of new medicines, there's growing consensus that marijuana, easily cultivated here, can help patients maintain a better quality of life with less dangerous side effects than expensive, processed pharmaceuticals. There's solid and growing data on the medicinal benefits of marijuana for treating neuropathy, hypertension, multiple sclerosis, ALS, HIV, for cancer patients whose chemotherapy causes nausea and appetite loss and many other ailments. While other treatments may be available, there are situations in which marijuana works better. Doctors in Arab, Marshall County and across the state should be able to legally make this call. [continues 178 words]
Determent Program Offered To Seventh- And Fifth-Graders SHALLOTTE, N.C. -- Brunswick County school board members plan to spend $50,000 this year to expand an anti-drug education program that some studies say does not work. In addition, school board members voted to begin a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program for Brunswick County seventh-graders without having qualified educators review the curriculum. "It is supposed to be better," said Reeda Hargrove, Brunswick County Schools' director of student support services. [continues 519 words]
Editor: So I have this back spasm, and I am in excruciating pain, unable to walk, barely able to crawl to the phone to call for help. I have a choice to make. Option #1: I can call a friend to take me to the hospital emergency room, where I may wait hours to see a doctor. After looking me over and asking a few questions, he/she will prescribe pain medication and muscle relaxants. This commonly used prescription drug is produced by a corporation whose main goal is not my health, but to make money for itself. [continues 389 words]
Programs Teach Dangers Of Drugs/Alcohol If it's not D.A.R.E. expanding in Northeast Ohio, it's PLUS growing in central and eastern Lake County, all aiming to help underage kids stay away from illegal drugs and alcohol. D.A.R.E. is Drug Abuse Resistance Education, founded nationally in 1983. PLUS is Peers Learning Usable Skills, established by the Lake County Narcotics Agency. D.A.R.E. started this academic year by showing up in Eastlake for the newly merged Catholic school of St. Mary Magdalene of Willowick and St. Justin Martyr of Eastlake. PLUS started its first full academic year in the Perry School District while still operating in Mentor and Kirtland school districts. [continues 795 words]
Combining marijuana possession penalties with meth law penalties is like combining jaywalking penalties with drunken-driving penalties. This is not right; these are two totally different things. Come on members of the House, pull your head out. - ---- Steve Jones Eagle River [end]
Why Some Former Cops Argue That All Drugs A Cents - Not Just Pot - Should Be Legal San Francisco is home to a wide variety of drug users, from the hardcore smack addicts on Sixth Street to the club kids high on ecstasy or crystal meth to the yuppies snorting lines off their downtown desks or getting drunk after work to the cornucopia of people across all classes smoking joints in Golden Gate Park or in their living rooms on weekends. Drug law reformers come in similarly wide varieties, but most have a strong preference for first legalizing the most popular and least harmful of illegal drugs: marijuana. That's how medical marijuana got its quasi-legal status in the city, and why San Francisco hosted the huge state conference of California National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws conference that began on 4/20. [continues 420 words]
San Franciscans Support Medical Marijuana, But Not Necessarily In Their Neighborhoods Everybody in San Francisco supports medical marijuana, but nobody wants to live next to a pot club. That's the simple ' - if overgeneralized ' - political truth now plaguing Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and others at City Hall who want to regulate the quasi-legal dispensaries that were proliferating in the city before a moratorium went into effect earlier this year. Mirkarimi spent six months developing legislation to regulate pot clubs, which was considered by the Board of Supervisors Oct. 18, heavily amended, and continued to Oct. 25. That hearing was later postponed after a representative for some club owners filed a challenge under the California Environmental Quality Act that requires a 45-day comment period. [continues 705 words]
Substituting one addiction for another is not a miracle cure. Methadone clinics prey on the weak, the helpless and the addicted and all at the expense of the taxpayers. TennCare cannot cover the elderly and the disabled, yet it pays for this legalized version of dope. Methadone gets into the bones, eats away at the teeth and destroys lives. Once treatments are started, it is impossible to stop, despite what you may have been told. Life becomes an endless nightmare of body aches, sweats and stomach cramps. Miracle - not hardly. Madness - if you ask me, yes, but I'm not a doctor. I'm just a mother who misses her son. Vera L. Jones Knoxville [end]
Officer Detained Man Because Of Race, Queen's Bench Justice Rules EDMONTON - A Court of Queen's Bench judge essentially threw out drug and gun charges against a Lebanese-Canadian man Friday, arguing Edmonton police unlawfully detained him on suspicion of drug dealing and violated his charter rights. The justice ruled the officer seemed to be acting on the assumption Safadi was a drug dealer because of his ethnicity and the discovery of as many as five cellphones inside the car. [continues 387 words]
(Re: "Putting the kind in kindbud," news, March 24.) I had to take a minute to write to thank you for the article you wrote about the cannabis club. I lost my mother just months ago, and I, too, now see the awful mistake this country has made in its continuation of the so-called "War on Drugs." I firmly believe she would have had a better end to her life if she had been given the option to use cannabis as an alternative to the morphine she was given to suppress her pain. The morphine left her in a total stupor, which kept her from communicating with her loved ones and even her caregivers. [continues 197 words]
More than 70 persons marched through the streets of Ridgely Friday evening pulling a replica coffin to represent the devastating effects of illegal drugs. They chanted anti-drug slogans as they marched. The march was organized by a group calling itself Grace Over Drugs, or G.O.D. and its announced goal is to fight drugs and drive drug dealers out of Lake County. With many of those marching wearing white G.O.D. caps and t-shirts they traveled over nearly four miles of Ridgely streets at sunset. [continues 189 words]
Murder Threat Failed To Halt Customs Operation Senior customs officials approved a cocaine sting operation by a team of elite drugs investigators despite warnings that arrests in this country would lead to the murder of at least one hostage in South America. A Guardian investigation has established that the operation, codenamed Begonia, went ahead in the face of strong objections from experienced investigators who refused to take part if there was any possibility that innocent people would be killed. In a document seen by the Guardian, one officer warned senior officials at Britain's oldest and most powerful law enforcement agency that Customs' own informant had provided a hostage to the drug suppliers to guarantee the shipment. Pressing ahead with the operation, the officer warned, would "ultimately bring disgrace" on Customs "and permanently cast doubts on our fairness and honesty". He concluded: "I am reluctant to take any part in this operation as I am unwilling to be party to murder of innocent people." [continues 1430 words]
BOLIVIA, N.C. - The need to serve the public is a powerful force in the life of Greg Bellamy, the newly appointed executive director of the Brunswick County Board of Elections. Bellamy was the elected clerk of Brunswick Superior Court in the mid-1980s when he was ensnared in a drug net cast by then-District Attorney Mike Easley. Bellamy pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance, resigned his county post and faded from public view. [continues 635 words]
Re: "Cycle of death: web of addiction," Page 1, Feb. 10. Your series on drugs and crime has failed us. Quoting police who equate certain drugs with crime and murder, without providing countervailing facts, only shows your complicity with their ignorance. Clearly, dealers and users get killed in the black market -- because trade has been criminalized, not because cocaine or heroin are inherently evil. Government and academic reports show that prohibition creates crime, corruption and violence. My own comparison between Holland and the United States shows that drug arrests increase crime. [continues 132 words]
B.C. activists have begun spraying commuter ferries with the watered-down essence of marijuana in a plan to stymie police dogs sniffing for the illicit drug. Wednesday marked the first of several "spray days," said a spokesman for the B.C. Marijuana Party. That campaign of secretly spraying the decks of ferries, said Michael Cost, is the most effective way of throwing drug dogs off the scent of marijuana shipments. The first covert operation occurred on a ferry travelling between Nanaimo, B.C., and Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver, Mr. Cost told globeandmail.com Thursday. It's something of a preferred smuggling route, say local police, for marijuana growers on Vancouver Island looking to get their product to the mainland market. [continues 325 words]
