The anti-methamphetamine program championed by Idaho First Lady Lori Otter is expected to receive another $1 million, thanks Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.

Simpson, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, secured the money as part of a final year-end bill funding several federal departments and agencies. The Idaho Meth Project is known for graphic anti-meth advertising.

Simpson also announced another $1.75 million in federal funds for Interstate 84, the Idaho State Police, the Idaho Department of Corrections and children's health services.

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The Worldwide Marijuana March drew more than 300 demonstrators to downtown Boise on Saturday, May 2. Offering peace signs and garnering many supportive car honks, the marchers moved slowly under scattered showers along Capitol Boulevard to the front lawn of the Idaho Legislature.

Speakers addressed the mass on the grass under the watch of a Capitol Annex camera and a few security guards. Boise police did not engage the pungent assembly.

Rev. Levon Lion opened with a plea for support of religious cannabis use. He mentioned his organization, The Church of Cognitive Therapy, and touted the Omega-3 in edible hemp seeds, which he offered for tasting. Positioned in front of a "CREATE NEW JOBS" sign, he also spoke about hemp's industrial value for paper, plastic, fiber and fuel.

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Group To Pursue Remnants Of Marijuana Initiatives

The city of Hailey will soon have a seven-member committee to oversee all things cannabis. Whether the committee succeeds in reforming marijuana laws will depend on who is on the committee and how motivated they are to push for change.

Hailey voters approved three marijuana and industrial hemp initiatives in 2007 and again in 2008. The initiatives were titled the Hailey Medical Marijuana Act, the Hailey Lowest Police Priority Act and the Hailey Industrial Hemp Act.

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Arlene Falcon hopes Moscow's 13th annual Hemp Fest dispels myths and dispenses facts about the reality of hemp.

"Hemp is such a sustainable plant with so many great attributes that get lost in the shuffle," the Hemp Fest coordinator said.

She said she hopes Hemp Fest will teach people the difference between hemp and marijuana. Both are from the same plant, cannabis, but hemp does not contain enough of the active ingredient THC to get a person high.

In addition to education, the event is about fun.

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Forms Committees To Handle Policy

What began as a controversial initiative to legalize marijuana use in the city of Hailey in 2007, may have ended Monday night as a footnote in the city's municipal code. Yet the city will form a committee to address the initiatives' original concerns.

City Attorney Ned Williamson will provide an annotation in the city's law book, explaining what happened for future generations, including a small description of the marijuana initiatives with dates, and the challenges to them, "just so that it's clear in an unbiased and objective way what happened, because 20 years from now people may not know."

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City Still Required To Advocate For Marijuana Reform

A judge's ruling this week took the teeth out of two controversial marijuana initiatives that were approved by Hailey voters, but left intact a requirement that the city advocate for reform of marijuana and industrial hemp laws.

Blaine County 5th District Court Judge Robert J. Elgee, in a decision filed Tuesday, voided portions of the initiatives that would have legalized medical marijuana use in the city and would have made enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest priority for Hailey police. The judge also voided language in the initiatives that would have required individual city officials to advocate for marijuana reform.

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Americans are discovering that the war on drugs begun 40 years ago by President Nixon has become costlier than the war in Iraq and more brutal on the streets of the U.S. than anything seen during the notorious underworld gang wars of Prohibition.

What began as infighting among cartels south of the border has now spilled over into American cities with unspeakable violence.

In a small county outside Birmingham, Ala., five men had their throats slit in a dispute involving $450,000 in drug money. In Phoenix, police report at least one kidnapping a day related in some fashion to drugs. Home invasion robberies are commonplace in big cities everywhere, when drug users look for easy pickings to finance their habits.

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BONNERS FERRY -None of 50 Boundary County School District students checked for illegal drug-use last week tested positive."I'm happy because anytime you have drug tests that come back negative that's good," Bonners Ferry High School Assistant Principal Ted Reynolds said about the 30 high school students who tested negative for marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and prescription drugs.

It was the second time this school year that students in ninth through 12th grades were tested; 20 tested negative for drug-use last fall, Reynolds said.

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Dear Editor of the Arbiter,

Who do I want deciding policies that affect Me as far as cannabis (marijuana) is concerned (Fiscal Federalism: Are States Rights For Sale? Feb. 9, 2009)? Neither state or federal government has the right to prohibit, persecute or exterminate the relatively safe, god-given plant cannabis.

Caging responsible adult humans for using cannabis is luciferous. It's time to Re-legalize cannabis and one reason that doesn't get mentioned is because it is Biblically correct since Christ God Our Father, the Ecologician, indicates He created all the seed-bearing plants, saying they are all good, on literally the very first page. The only Biblical restriction placed on cannabis is that it is to be accepted with thankfulness (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5).

Cannabis doesn't belong to government; "For the earth is the Lord's, and all it contains" (1 Corinthians 10:26). Cannabis prohibition is the work of the devil.

Stan White lives in Dillon, Colorado.

[end]

Did you happen to catch the film "Super High Me?" The documentary follows comedian and former High Times "Stoner of the Year" Doug Benson as he smokes massive amounts of weed.

Benson first abstains from smoking for 30 days and is given a battery of tests. After the first period of sobriety, Benson smokes copious amounts of weed for 30 days and is given the same battery of tests. The results are surprising and amusing. Just as surprising is the more serious topic addressed in the film: California's medical marijuana movement.

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Shocking, scary and very disturbing.

These are words which are normally associated with horror movies, but are an apt description for the preventative television, radio and print advertisements used by the Idaho Meth Project.

"The ads are a tool that thrusts meth use into your face and makes it impossible to look away," said Cindy Smith-Putnam a southeastern Idaho volunteer coordinator for the Idaho Meth Project.

The Idaho Meth Project Web site quotes Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter as saying, "You're going to see disturbing and even shocking images of what meth does to people. These public service spots don't sugar-coat it, because it's just that ugly. And Idahoans need to see and hear the truth about this drug."

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The court ruled that just because the couple's daughter was on probation, they were not subject to drug testing.

The Idaho Court of Appeals says a northern Idaho couple had their constitutional protection from unlawful searches violated when a magistrate ordered them to submit to drug tests as part of their daughter's probation.

The parents were not named in the ruling to protect the identity of their juvenile daughter.

In the unanimous ruling handed down Thursday, the appellate court found that 1st District Magistrate Robert Burton's ruling served a laudable purpose in requiring the parents to be tested for marijuana. But the appeals court said it was still a violation of the parents' right against unlawful searches.

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Isabella Robertson Is Bonner County's Chief Public Defender

SANDPOINT - In the lobby of the Bonner County Public Defender's office hangs a poem by Helen Keller. It reads: "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do."

At the back of the building, down hallways that jog and intersect as they pass a series of closely spaced doorways, sits the office of Izzy Robertson. It's a small room with a desk and bookshelves in one corner, a table with two chairs placed near the door. Robertson has served as the county's public defender for about a year, continuing in a field of law that she has practiced since 1997.

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After watching the Broncos decimate the Ducks in Autzen Stadium, I was impressed with how well their fans took the loss. We wished them the best as we made our way out of the stadium and across the river. Upon reaching the end of the footbridge, I noticed that a local glass artist had set up a table to sell pipes in front of several thousands of football fans making their way across the river.

"I figured after the loss everyone would want a little pick-me-up," the seller said when asked why he was selling in full public view.

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Legislation to legalize medical marijuana in Idaho will be proposed in Boise this January, said the man behind the movement, Rep. Tom Trail, R-Moscow.

Trail is drafting legislation modeled after bills from the National Conference of State Legislatures, and it will incorporate elements of statutes from Washington and Oregon, he said.

"I have a number of doctors up here who are very supportive of it," Trail said.

Thirty states had medical marijuana laws in 2007, with 12 - mostly in the west - protecting patients from criminal prosecution, according the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington D.C. non-profit organization, which promotes legalization of medical marijuana and other measures to regulate pot like alcohol.

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The school district has had random testing in the past, but the new system includes all varsity and junior varsity football players.

The Homedale School District will drug test all of its varsity and junior varsity football players this fall after the district's board of trustees approved a request from coach Rob Kassebaum.

The district has had a random testing policy in place for students participating in extracurricular activities since 1999, but last week's decision expands the testing program to all football players.

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National statistics can be startling, especially when applied to our own communities. A federal report released just last week reveals "that more than 40 percent of the nation's estimated 10.8 million underage drinkers obtained their alcohol from adults of legal drinking age-including their own parents." (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.)

In Blaine County, our Community Drug Coalition is comprised of critical agencies working to improve the health and safety of our community by decreasing alcohol and other drug use among our youth. These agencies include Blaine County Government, Juvenile Probation, Blaine County Sheriff's Office, St. Luke's Center for Community Health, The Hailey Police Department, The School District, as well as volunteers from the business sector, Hispanic community, PTA's, addiction treatment, and youth.

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Columnist Dick Dorworth dances around the true reason LSD was outlawed. Authorities were more than a little fearful of being exposed for the lying frauds they are. They knew for a fact that an LSD trip could undermine years of propaganda and opinion molding. Back in the 1960s when LSD was still legal, trippers saw Washington bigwigs thumping for the Vietnam War and instantly and without exception responded, "They're lying!" LSD enabled trippers to "see" the lies flashing out of McNamara et al like overamped strobe lights.

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When Albert Hofmann died in April at the age of 102 at his home in Switzerland, he would have been unknown outside the scientific community had it not been for what he affectionately called his "problem child," LSD--lysergic acid diethylamide-25, which he discovered/invented/synthesized in 1938 in the process of looking for medicinal uses of a fungus found on rye, wheat and other grains. He was a Swiss scientist in the traditional mold searching for ways to improve human life and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations in unexpected ways. LSD deeply altered the lives of millions of people and, thereby, the course of human events.

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The Reefer Vote Passed To Sanctify Into Law A De Facto Practice.

Hailey has a drug problem. To refresh your short-term memory: In late May, for the second time in eight months, Hailey voters approved three measures to loosen city laws governing marijuana. Specifically, the initiatives seek to legalize medical marijuana and industrial hemp and set the enforcement of marijuana laws as the lowest police priority.

The lead in Terry Smith's May 28 Idaho Mountain Express story said it all: "New election, same results."

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