Danielle Allen argued that the successful anti-tobacco approach would solve the illicit drug problem. I amnot convinced.

Legalizing and controlling marijuana for recreational use follows the tobacco model. But in states that have legalized marijuana, businesses promote marijuana, and thatmay increase its use rather than reduce it.

Decriminalizing hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine is useful but falls short of solving this problem. On the positive side, it would help addicts get treatment rather than jail time. But Ms. Allen assumed that such treatment programs would dry up the demand for hard drugs. This may not be the case with new addicts coming along, despite antidrug campaigns.

[continues 59 words]

Danielle Allen's recommendation in her Dec. 30 op-ed, "We already know how to win the war on drugs," to model the U.S. approach to illegal substances on the handling of tobacco, has a glaring logical flaw: Seriously addicted tobacco users can function effectively as workers, parents and citizens. There is no deformation of judgment and character inherent in tobacco addiction.

As those who have dealt with addicts or with their families know, addiction to cocaine, opiates and similar substances produces behavioral changes that destroy the work and family lives of those addicted.

The "war on drugs" has been unsuccessful in reducing abuse and addiction. More funds for treatment and prevention are badly needed; however, new and creative policies will not be built on ignoring the devastation of personal functioning inherent in drug addiction.

Linda Gore, Gaithersburg

[end]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In January 1964, the Beatles first broke onto the Billboard chart with "I Want to Hold Your Hand"; by June, Ringo Starr had collapsed from tonsillitis and pharyngitis. In January, the surgeon general announced that scientists had found conclusive evidence linking smoking to cancer and thus launched our highly successful 50-year public-health fight against tobacco. In August, the North Vietnamese fired on a U.S. naval ship in the Gulf of Tonkin, which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the public phase of the Vietnam War. Alongside an accelerating deployment of conventional troops would come their widespread use of marijuana and heroin.

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The Dec. 24 front-page article "Obama's clemency list brings joy- and heartbreak" painted a picture of Weldon Angelos as a Greek immigrant's son who "was arrested for selling marijuana in three separate transactions . . . while possessing a firearm," resulting in a statutory sentence of 55 years in prison. Mr. Angelos was indicted by a grand jury that charged him with 20 criminal counts for distributing marijuana, possessing a firearm during a drug trafficking crime, possessing a stolen firearm, possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number, possessing a firearm while being an unlawful user of controlled substances and money laundering.

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'Kush Gods' Took 'Donations'

For months, a brightly painted Mercedes SUV and a Lexus coupe plied the hipster spots of the District along H and U streets and Adams Morgan, their operators openly doling out brownies, cupcakes, cookies and gummy bears that police say were laced with marijuana. The vehicles, with out-of-state plates and bearing pictures of marijuana plants, were as common in some neighborhoods as food trucks, and the proprietors of "KushGods" did little to hide their enterprise. They talked to the media about trading pot for "donations," and patrons could follow them on Twitter and call the mon a phone advertised on the vehicles.

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As marijuana extracts expand their presence on the East Coast, an especially potent concentrate is appearing on law enforcement radar.

Shatter, a cannabis extract with about 80 percent THC content, is legal for recreational use in states such as Colorado and Washington, sold in medical marijuana dispensaries in other states and is faster-acting and far more easily concealed than marijuana.

On Monday, Loudoun County sheriff 's deputies intercepted a truck that had about $900,000 worth of packaged marijuana near Dulles International Airport. Included in that load was 15 pounds of shatter, in total packaged weight. Shatter, which is sold by the gram because of its potency, retails for about $60 a gram in Colorado, so 10 pounds of shatter would be worth nearly $270,000 - in a state where it is legal. Black-market shatter probably would cost much more.

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Marijuana parties in Washington just aren't what they used to be, and Keith Stroup is pleased about that.

They used to be wild, illicit affairs, held in word-of-mouth locations with off-the-record agreements. Stroup, the wild-eyed, long-haired, wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, often acted as host. He lost his NORML job once, after outing President Jimmy Carter's drug czar for purportedly snorting cocaine at the organization's 1977 Christmas party.

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Supporters of more liberal marijuana laws on Thursday delivered dramatic pleas that a temporary District law that bans consumption of the drug in private clubs be allowed to expire.

If the ban remains, the District would be punishing the poor, the sick, children and many others, the advocates said, because the law effectively eliminates any loopholes allowing for marijuana use outside a private home. That leaves those who rent, are visiting or who live in federally subsidized housing without a "safe" space in which to partake, marijuana activists said.

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Calling for Legalization Now Will Slow Reform Progress

For marijuana reform advocates, 2014 and 2015 have been remarkable years. Two more states and the District of Columbia joined Colorado and Washington in legalizing recreational ("adult-use") marijuana. Congress passed legislation dealing with issues like Drug Enforcement Administration policies and veterans' access to state legal marijuana, among others.

And candidates (from both parties) running for high-profile offices - governor, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, even president - are talking about marijuana policy, and not with War on Drugs rhetoric.

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Regarding the Nov. 27 Metro article "Va. pot arrests defy trend":

The Central Virginia Marijuana Task Force is guilty of using marijuana prohibition's collateral damage to justify throwing good money at bad public policy. Illegal marijuana in Virginia is a gateway to hard drugs because it is distributed by drug cartels that sell meth, cocaine and heroin. These criminals do not require identification to prove ages and kill to resolve business disputes over border trafficking routes.

Legal marijuana in Colorado is sold by tightly regulated retailers that generate state tax revenue, require identification for proof of age and sell locally grown marijuana exclusively.

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It May Be Legal, but Keep It Away From Kids, School Officials Say

Cassandra Pinkney, the founder of a charter school in Southeast Washington, makes video messages for parents about how to prepare their children for school: Establish a bed-time routine, read with them, eat healthy food, and, with the city's relaxed position on marijuana use, do not smoke pot around them.

In a "fireside chat" titled "marijuana and your student," the director of Eagle Academy Public Charter School, which enrolls children in preschool through third grade, told parents that, even though the District has legalized marijuana, it's not safe to expose children to the drug. Even second-hand smoke can affect their emotional states and attentiveness in school, she said.

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The smell near the Columbia Heights Metro station Wednesday night was unmistakable. A lit joint in hand, Tony Lee stood outside a residence talking with friends as the evening bustle passed them by, no one paying the group of men any special attention.

"The community I'm in, everyone engages in smoking," said Lee, 34, a District resident who runs his own small construction firm. Plus, he said, if he's not smoking, he detects the odor of other people getting high throughout the city on a daily basis anyway.

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Officer Who Guarded Capitol Now Heads Security for Possible Medical-Marijuana Grower in MD.

For much of his 46-year career in law enforcement, Terrance W. Gainer viewed marijuana as a substance to be confiscated and its sellers as criminals to be investigated and arrested.

He is now security chief for one of the nation's leading medical marijuana growers, tasked with, among other things, protecting a 20- acre site in Western Maryland that could become home to one of the state's first cannabis-growing operations.

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New Data Show Progress, but No Room for Complacency.

REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL candidates have spent much of their time on the campaign trail lately pledging more treatment and less punishment to deal with epidemic drug abuse, most dramatically in a viral video featuring an emotional New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. This is a welcome development - even if the GOPers, like their Democratic counterparts, exaggerate the degree to which arrests for simple possession of drugs, as opposed to trafficking, have swollen the prison population. The more attention leaders focus on the heartbreaking rise in prescription opioid and heroin addiction, and overdose deaths the better.

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"Over the last few decades, we've also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before. And that is the real reason our prison population is so high."

- - President Obama, remarks at the NAACP Conference, July 14, 2015

"Two-thirds of the people in our prisons are there for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug related."

- - Businesswoman Carly Fiorina, remarks at the GOP debate, Sept. 16

"We are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana."

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Releasing Nonviolent Drug Offenders Is Only a Start.

THE FEDERAL Bureau of Prisons will release 6,000 inmates locked up for non violent drug crime sat the end of the month. If a bi-partisan group of senators gets its way, that will be just the beginning. On Thursday, the group pushed a criminal justice reform bill through the Judiciary Committee that backers say would reduce the federal prison population by tens of thousands.

All of this is progress. But even if the bill passes, the number of people in prison in the United States would still be astoundingly high.

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Last week, President Obama announced a multipronged effort to address the epidemic of addiction to prescription opiate painkillers in this country. This is long overdue and, unfortunately, like most action on addiction and mental illness, comes after the problem has reached Stage 4 - and is that much harder to treat - when it could have been diagnosed and treated at Stage 1, or perhaps even prevented altogether.

I bring a unique perspective to this issue, one I would prefer I did not have. For 10 years, I sat on the House Appropriations Committee, overseeing every federal agency charged with addressing this subject. And during much of that time, I was addicted to prescription opiate painkillers myself.

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The CDC Is Right to Advise Doctors on Opioid Prescriptions.

HORRIFIC AS it is for the victims, drug addiction's impact reverberates beyond them, to include families, friends, whole communities. Thanks to a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, we can begin to quantify those wider consequences in our area. Nearly 3 in 10 Marylanders say they have a close friend or family member who was or is addicted to opiates such as prescription pain pills or heroin.

The figures range from 4 in 10 in Baltimore to 1 in 6 in Montgomery County; but whether in the city or the suburbs, these numbers are far too high and fully warrant Gov. Larry Hogan's (R) promise to focus on the problem.

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Why is it so hard for us to see how profoundly a $100 billion illegal market in anything would distort a society?

To argue for legalization of marijuana and decriminalization of other drugs does not, at first blush, appear to put one on the side of the angels, especially given the accelerating heroin epidemic.

But legalization and decriminalization are what we need if we want to make headway against mass incarceration, high homicide rates in urban black communities and poor educational outcomes in urban schools.

[continues 1042 words]

The events described in the Oct. 14 Metro article "Murder conviction in robbery of Montgomery home" played out as an unfortunate example of why the strident gun supporters' push for firearms as the best defense is flawed.

The victim set out to defend his housemates, himself and $17,000 of contraband with a firearm and was killed. Ironically, his defense failed in the face of not equal but lesser force, a cutting edge of some sort (which suggests that the mob who invaded his home was intent on robbery and not murder).

As a corollary, if marijuana were controlled in Maryland as it is in the District, the "goods" would have been worth far less and perhaps not valuable enough to steal (and ultimately murder for).

Kenneth Matzkin, Arlington

[end]