It was with deep regret and sadness that I looked closely at the pictures of each of my 45 fellow Baltimore residents murdered in July ("45 murders in 31 days: Looking back at Baltimore's deadliest month," Aug. 29).

All but two of them share one common trait: they are people of color. Where are "Black Lives Matter" or Al Sharpton now?

The ostensible reason for a large number of these murders is the proliferation of drugs and their insidious effect on human behavior. But what is the core reason for this?

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Your report "45 murders in 31 days: Looking back at Baltimore's deadliest month" (Aug. 29) may be the most important news article since Freddie Gray's death.

It provides a perspective that no longer permits people who don't live in the poor neighborhoods most affected by the violence to discount the homicides there by simply chalking them up to "drug dealers killing drug dealers."

While there may be some of that, for each and every loss of life someone nevertheless grieves. Thanks for publishing this important story.

Jeanne Geiger Brown

[end]

In a recent editorial The Sun chose to ignore the many positives of Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford's interim heroin task force report and instead spent most of its energy misinterpreting and then harping on his seven-word remark about funding: "It's probably never going to be enough" ("Rutherford pleads poverty," Aug. 26).

Why is this shocking? The heroin crisis needs a holistic solution; money alone will not solve it. This is widely recognized as fact, and was made abundantly clear by numerous testimonials given during the task force's open meetings that were held across the state.

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A24-year-old athlete from Columbia, a teenage girl from Glen Burnie who wanted to become a medical examiner and a 21-year-old brother of two from Pasadena. What do these three individuals have in common? Each died from a drug overdose.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in 2013, nearly 44,000 Americans died from drug overdose, referring to the situation as an "epidemic" as it eclipsed the number of deaths from auto accidents for the fifth year in a row.

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Putting city residents with minor criminal records to work on Baltimore's $1 billion school renovation project looks like a win-win situation

Ask anyone who lives in Baltimore the two things the city needs most and you're likely to get the same answer: Better schools for its children and more jobs for its working-age adults. That's why a proposal to make sure as many local residents as possible get work from the $1 billion plan to rebuild the school system's aging infrastructure sounds like a winner all around. Not only will young people get the modern school facilities they deserve but thousands of the city's unemployed could finally nail down a good job paying decent wages.

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Rutherford Says Size of Problem Outstrips Available Money

Cautioning that there likely would never be enough money to fix Maryland's heroin problem, Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford said Tuesday that a state task force recommends an expansion of treatment and prevention efforts to begin addressing it.

Among the recommendations, part of an interim report to the governor, are allocations such as $800,000 to a residential treatment facility in Kent County to increase its capacity to 40 beds, and $300,000 to Baltimore for a pilot program in which recovering addicts would reach out to and help current users.

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Attorney General Frosh's commendable effort to stamp out conscious bias in law enforcement is only the first step to ensuring justice

Attorney General Brian E. Frosh is poised to take a commendable step today in the effort to restore trust between the police and minority communities by issuing a set of guidelines designed to stop officers from using race, ethnicity or other characteristics as a factor in routine law enforcement. But as an investigation of Baltimore police practices by The Sun's Catherine Rentz makes clear, it will be no easy thing to translate the principles Mr. Frosh is articulating into discernible change in neighborhoods like Freddie Gray's Sandtown-Winchester. AMY DAVIS/BALTIMORE SUN Attorney General Brian E. Frosh is seeking to sharply limit the influence of racial and other biases on police work.

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I applaud Joseph Scalia's commentary ("Blame city violence on the drug war," Aug. 22). His statement that this is a war not on drugs but on people living in war zones in every American city is unfailingly accurate. His admonition that no progress, regardless of the dollars spent, will be achieved to alleviate the killings and spare these families and neighborhoods in free fall until a truce has been declared could not be more prophetic.

One might expect law enforcement and its unions would be the first large contingent to call for that truce, given the impossible job they have been charged with all these years.

George Frazier, Baltimore

[end]

Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby recently lamented in an op-ed piece about the difficulty of prosecuting crime because witnesses refuse to come forward.

Rep Elijah Cummings recently issued an emotional appeal for "blacks lives [to] matter to black people." The city police chief recently announced that 10 federal agents would embed within the department to stem the rising violence.

Baltimore is not unique in its surging crime rate. Politicians, police officials and community leaders around the country get on TV and appear baffled by the "senseless" violence.

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Applications for licenses to operate 15 medical cannabis growing facilities, 15 processing plants and 109 dispensaries in the state of Maryland will begin in the next few weeks. The citizens of Baltimore County, and residents throughout Maryland, are relying on their county council members and county commissioners to serve them well when it comes to the location of these medical cannabis facilities.

While the General Assembly has only legalized medical marijuana, which is a decision I wholeheartedly support, local government cannot be so short sighted as to just focus on today and ignore tomorrow. The point in the implementation of Maryland's medical cannabis laws has arrived where council members and commissioners must exercise county government's long-standing authority on land use matters. As the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission executive director Hannah L. Byron confirmed at the Maryland Association of Counties (MACo) Summer Conference, these businesses must comply with local zoning regulations.

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Regarding your thoughtful editorial on the medical use of cannabis, medical marijuana is not something to be feared ("Medical marijuana debate," Aug. 14).

Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that states with open medical marijuana access have a 25 percent lower opioid overdose death rate than marijuana prohibition states.

The protective effect grows stronger with time. States with established access showed a 33 percent reduction in deaths. This research finding has huge implications for cities like Baltimore that are struggling with prescription narcotic and heroin overdose deaths.

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County Officials Should Be Wary of Overly Restrictive Local Zoning Laws Governing Dispensaries

Local officials meeting at the Maryland Association of Counties convention in Ocean City last week had plenty of questions during a session set aside to discuss the state's new rules governing medical marijuana. Among the most intensely debated issues: How to ensure the legalization of pot for medical use doesn't encourage abuses by patients and physicians, as it has in some other states, or create a public nuisance in areas where marijuana dispensaries are located. Those are all valid concerns expected to be addressed in the regulations the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission will issue next month.

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Maryland Can Follow in the Footsteps of Other States That Have Increased Public Safety While Reducing Spending on Prisons

The number of inmates in Maryland's prisons has dropped 10 percent since 2006, and crime has fallen at the same time. Yet the state corrections department has seen an inflation-adjusted budget increase of 35 percent during that period. Something is wrong here, and an unusual coalition of Maryland's leaders from both parties and all three branches of government is trying to find the solution.

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Counties Concerned About Nuts and Bolts of Medical Marijuana

OCEAN CITY - County officials from across Maryland packed an information session here Thursday, seeking guidance now that entrepreneurs are scouting locations to grow and sell marijuana for medical use.

"If it's coming, I want to be as knowledgeable and prepared as I can be," said Michael Hewitt, a St. Mary's County commissioner who was among 200 people who attended the session at the Maryland Association of Counties summer convention.

The General Assembly passed legislation this year and last to revise a 2013 law that had legalized the sale of medical marijuana in the state but was so restrictive that it attracted no proposals. Regulations have been drafted and, unless new snags emerge, people suffering from cancer, epilepsy and other ailments are expected to be able to purchase cannabis to relieve their symptoms by late 2016.

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I was disappointed to read your front-page story about marijuana sales ("Maryland native dubbed 'marijuana mogul' in Colorado," Aug. 10).

How sad it is that people want to make money off of the weaknesses of others. People with addiction problems and mental illnesses that cause them to use drugs should not be taken advantage of or encouraged.

In this day and age when we are working hard to break nicotine addiction and cigarette smoking, alcohol addiction and drunkenness, we should not be encouraging another kind of drug addiction to flourish.

Lisa Sneed, Baltimore

[end]

The first time Brian Rogers took a bong hit at a party with his Havre de Grace High School friends, he said marijuana had no effect on him.

Now Rogers co-owns a multimillion-dollar marijuana company in Colorado at the center of the CNNdocu-series "High Profits," and he's no longer ambivalent.

"It's changed my life," the 34-year-old Harford County native said.

While recreational marijuana is illegal in 46 states - including Maryland - Colorado has been at the forefront of the legalization movement. And Rogers has been at the forefront of capitalizing on it.

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Possibility of Economic Boost From Production Facilities Is Enticing in Conservative Rural Areas of MD.

Washington County is a proudly conservative place. Voters here haven't backed a Democrat for president since 1964, and same-sex marriage lost by a landslide in a referendum three years ago.

But when Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries pitched a proposal to put a medical-marijuana production plant here, the county's five county commissioners - Republicans all - passed a resolution unanimously supporting the plan.

Residents of Hagerstown, the county seat, seem to be taking the news in stride. The consensus: yes to marijuana for relieving pain, no to recreational use.

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Hagerstown Residents Say Yes to Medical Marijuana

HAGERSTOWN - Washington County is a proudly conservative place. Voters haven't backed a Democrat for president since 1964, and same-sex marriage lost by a landslide in a referendum three years ago.

But when Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries pitched a proposal to put a medical marijuana production plant here, the county's five county commissioners - Republicans all - passed a resolution unanimously supporting the plan.

Residents in Hagerstown, the county seat, seem to be taking the news in stride. The consensus: yes to marijuana for relieving pain, no to recreational use.

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The Baltimore Health Department's Plan to Expand Drug Treatment to Everyone Who Needs It Is the First Step Toward Reducing Overdose Deaths Statewide

If you have a heart attack, the ER physician doesn't just give you an aspirin and send you home. If your kidneys fail, doctors don't throw up their hands and discharge you because they're short on dialysis machines. But if you're lucky enough to survive a heroin overdose, you might have to wait weeks to get an appointment at a drug treatment center, and even then you're as likely as not to be told there are no beds available.

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Group Urges Multifaceted Approach to Help Reduce Overdoses and Deaths

To stem the growing heroin addiction rates and overdose deaths, a Baltimore task force plans to unveil a more than $20 million proposal today that includes around-the-clock treatment options.

The panel is expected to outline a multifaceted approach that also includes training for families in deploying a heroin overdose antidote, an informational website and an educational campaign. Some of the proposals are already being planned or underway.

City officials, as well as state and federal leaders, have been sounding alarms about the surge in heroin and prescription drug deaths. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake formed the task force in the fall. She says the recommendations will serve as a "blueprint."

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