A Medical Extract Offers Relief for Epileptic Children Imagine the following scenario: You have a son or daughter who suffers from epilepsy. Seizures wrack your child's body every day. Some days, he or she endures a dozen or more seizures. The condition prevents your child from going to school, from eating normally, from having friends. It also exacts a toll on you and your family. You cannot leave your child alone for any extended period of time, and certain activities, such as sports games, road trips or visits to the movie theater, are off limits. [continues 788 words]
"FBI drug agent risked all to feed heroin habit" [front page, June 29] was remarkable in that this disgraced felon showed no remorse for his crimes. As a former FBI executive who retired from the Washington field office and a former superintendent of detectives for the Metropolitan Police Department, I find Matthew Lowry's criminal conduct outrageous. The FBI motto is "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity." Mr. Lowry's actions were disloyal, cowardly and dishonorable to his country, the FBI, his family, the citizens of the District of Columbia and, lastly, himself. [continues 72 words]
A Medical Extract Offers Relief for Epileptic Children Imagine the following scenario: You have a son or daughter who suffers from epilepsy. Seizures wrack your child's body every day. Some days, he or she endures a dozen or more seizures. The condition prevents your child from going to school, from eating normally, from having friends. It also exacts a toll on you and your family. You cannot leave your child alone for any extended period of time, and certain activities, such as sports games, road trips or visits to the movie theater, are off limits. [continues 783 words]
He Was Stealing Seized Evidence Even As Agency Was Hailing His Work "How do you tell someone you've idolized your entire life that you're a heroin addict?" Matthew Lowry, who kept his addiction hidden from his father and others Matthew Lowry was out of pills and getting desperate. The doctor who prescribed pain medication to ease his chronic and painful inflammation of the intestines had disappeared. He went to clinics, but his wife had begun questioning the bills. He was shaking, sweating, tired. [continues 2360 words]
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser vowed Monday to crack down hard on suppliers of synthetic drugs after a surge in overdoses sent dozens of people to area hospitals in the past month. Bowser (D) plans to introduce emergency legislation this week that would give the D.C. police chief authority to shut down any business found selling the drugs for a period of 96 hours while police investigate. The legislation would also institute a "two-strike rule," allowing the police chief to shut down two-time offenders for a period of up to 30 days, coupled with a $10,000 fine-five times as much as the current penalty. The District's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs would then move to permanently revoke a store's license, Bowser said Monday at a news conference outside Sasha Bruce Youthwork, an organization that works with at-risk and homeless youths. [continues 659 words]
Residents' Responses Range From Praise to Skepticism Citing disappearing open-air drug markets and new ways narcotics are being sold, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier says she wants her detectives to concentrate on suppliers and not streetcorner busts that have long been a staple of policing across the country. The strategy shift, outlined at a community meeting Thursday, will eliminate most of the plainclothes operations police have used for decades to target outdoor drug sales, magnets for drive-by shootings and other violence. Coming at a tense moment in the nation's relations between police and the public, it could also ease confrontations involving officers not immediately identifiable as law enforcement. It is an admission that some tactics - which were viewed by some critics as heavyhanded even when the crack epidemic sparked record numbers of homicides - no longer make sense amid a decline in fatal shootings and the availability of synthetic narcotics sold over the Internet, through social media and in convenience stores. "Our main goal is the supply," Lanier told about three dozen residents at the community forum in Northeast Washington. "We don't want to focus police efforts on just people who are addicted. We want to be focusing on the people who are bringing the stuff in." In an interview, she added: "Our criminal environment is changing rapidly. We have to keep up." The plan would eliminate District vice squads - each with about 20 detectives and supervisors - and shift higher-level investigations to the centralized Narcotics and Special Investigations Division. [continues 834 words]
House Budget Plan Would Continue Ban on Sales but Not Roll Back Legalization House Republicans advanced a budget plan Thursday that would prevent legal sales of marijuana in the District until at least 2017. Advocates for legalization, however, called it a victory. What the Republican budget does not do yet is roll back Initiative 71, the voter-approved measure from November that legalized pot for recreational use in the nation's capital. Since early this year, D.C. residents have been allowed to possess, grow and, in the privacy of their own homes, smoke marijuana. [continues 779 words]
Regarding the June 7Metro article "Pot-smoking parents: What about the kids?": Parents can reconcile personal marijuana consumption with its effects on children with three tools: science to understand how marijuana harms the developing adolescent brain and can be addictive in some people; a clear understanding of the law, including the differences between federal and state laws and between legalization and decriminalization; and strategies to have age-appropriate, effective communication with their children that acknowledges some laws have not caught up with science. [continues 120 words]
The June 7 front-page article "Against his better judgment," about mandatory minimum sentencing in drug cases, quoted U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett telling a defendant, "My hands are tied on your sentence. I'm sorry." The article failed to note that there is an actor in the system whose hands aren't tied: the federal prosecutor. Federal prosecutors have the discretion to pursue lesser charges in these cases but choose not to. Why would the prosecutor agree only to a plea bargain that carried a 10-year mandatory minimum for a defendant? How does he or she respond to the judge's criticism? Why was such a decision made in light of the Justice Department's August 2013 directive to assistant U.S. attorneys not to pursue charges bearing mandatory minimums against first-time nonviolent offenders? An examination of this case or sentencing in general should not overlook the immense power prosecutors have to alleviate the injustice of mandatory minimum sentencing or to perpetuate it. Brian A. Dupre, Washington [end]
Many Uncertain About Navigating the 'New Normal' Like the parent of any toddler and kindergartner, Jared wants to keep certain things out of reach. Liquor is stored out of sight in a cupboard. The household cleaners are safely kept behind childproof locks. And the marijuana is stashed high on a shelf in a fireproof lockbox. Evenings fall into a familiar routine. Family dinner. Baths. Then, after their daughters are snuggled in for the night, Jared slips out onto the back deck of their District apartment and a now-legal bowl of marijuana. [continues 1623 words]
In her May 31 Sunday Opinion commentary, "Caught in the drug trade," Danielle Allen proposed decriminalizing marijuana and other illegal drugs as a matter of justice because drug prohibition laws are administered inequitably. This reminds me of T.S. Eliot's line, "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason." Even if drug prohibition were administered equitably, it would still be a costly folly, as we should have learned many years ago with alcohol prohibition. Alcohol and tobacco are as addictive and harmful as any of the prohibited drugs. An enlightened policy would legalize, regulate, tax and educate. Prohibition serves only to establish a criminal enterprise that breeds violence and tends to corrupt law enforcement. We spend some $50 billion a year to maintain this futile policy. If we would do the right thing, we would eliminate a great deal of corruption and violence while tapping a significant source of revenue. Stan Namovicz, Takoma Park [end]
The new visibility of police violence toward African Americans has stoked public debate about policing: What about body cameras? Should we reform police training? Perhaps we should go slow on all that military gear? I find it almost impossible to sit through any of this while the underlying issue goes unaddressed: It's the drug economy, stupid. It's well past time to legalize marijuana. But it's also time to consider decriminalizing nonviolent crimes involving other drugs, or at least to reclassify lower-level, nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors. We should also expunge felony convictions for many classes of nonviolent drug offenses - those involving marijuana but for other drugs, too - to re-enfranchise, economically and politically, those who have staffed the drug trade. [continues 922 words]
People with Alzheimer's disease - especially those in the District - should be aware of a 2014 article in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease that found that THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana, at low doses, "may slow or halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease." Since District residents can legally obtain medical marijuana for conditions with a doctor's approval, and considering the lack of effective treatments for Alzheimer's and marijuana's relative safety compared with many pharmaceuticals, it is an option worth considering. Richard Kennedy, Lorton The writer is a member of the steering committee of Safe Access-DC, an organization that advocates for access to medical marijuana. [end]
If you live in the District or one of the 23 states that have legalized marijuana and you work for the federal government, think twice before lighting a joint. Pot is still illegal for you. New guidance Wednesday from the Office of Personnel Management is unambiguous and stern. Federal workforce rules remain unchanged for the roughly 4.1 million federal employees and military personnel across the United States. The U.S. government still considers marijuana an illegal drug, and possessing or using it is a crime. [continues 439 words]
Venezuela is afflicted with the world's highest inflation, its second highest murder rate and crippling shortages of food, medicine and basic consumer goods. Its authoritarian government is holding some 70 political prisoners, including the mayor of Caracas and senior opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, and stands accused by human rights groups of illegal detentions, torture and repression of independent media. All of that is now pretty well known, and it is finally beginning to gain some attention from Latin American leaders who for years did their best to appease or ignore Hugo Chavez and his "Bolivarian Revolution." What's less understood is the complicating factor that will make any political change or economic reconstruction in this failing state far more difficult: The Chavez regime, headed since his demise by Nicolas Maduro, harbors not just a clique of crackpot socialists, but also one of the world's biggest drug cartels. [continues 651 words]
Regarding the May 18 Wonkblog excerpt "How the IRS seized a man's life savings without ever charging him with a crime": The Internal Revenue Service got a court order to seize Lyndon McLellan's bank account in a "civil forfeiture" action. No crime was alleged, just a pattern of suspicious actions-making bank deposits of less than $10,000. The article mentioned other civil forfeitures involving assets seized during traffic stops, on the premise that the assets might be tied to illicit activities. Why would law enforcement officers do such things? Clearly, the issue is not the solving of crime. Is it policy? Are there quotas? Do police and the government view all citizens as crooks - some caught, the rest guilty but not yet nailed? [continues 69 words]
The city is missing out on tax revenue. As the May 18 front-page article "Legal pot in the District is a boon for illegal dealers" reported, D.C. voters' determination to legalize marijuana possession through Initiative 71 is having significant unintended consequences. Because residents can legally use and possess marijuana but can't legally buy it, the illegal drug trade has increased and the city is missing out on the tax revenue it would receive if the sales were regulated. [continues 170 words]
Not long ago, a man who had covertly dealt pot in the nation's capital for three decades approached a young political operative at a birthday party in a downtown Washington steakhouse. He was about to test a fresh marketing strategy to take advantage of the District's peculiar new marijuana law, which allows people to possess and privately consume the drug but provides them no way to legally buy it for recreational use. Those contradictions have created a surge in demand and new opportunities for illicit pot purveyors. [continues 1614 words]
The first two steps toward uplifting young black men are simple: Stop killing them and stop locking them in prison for nonviolent offenses. Subsequent steps are harder, but no real progress can be made until the basic right to life and liberty is secured. If anything positive is to come of Freddie Gray's death and the Baltimore rioting that ensued, let it be a new and cleareyed focus on these fundamental issues of daily life for millions of Americans. Central to the crisis is "zero-tolerance" or "broken windows" policing, which basically involves cracking down on minor offenses in the hope of reducing major crime as well. Whether this strategy works is the subject of two arguments whose right answers can only be inferred, not proved. [continues 648 words]
Twice a week at the office of Patrick Fasusi, District residents line up to ask the pain specialist to approve their use of medical marijuana. For most, the brief wait in the lobby is longer than their consultation. As marijuana, which became legal for recreational use in the nation's capital in February, continues to morph from contraband to commonplace, Fasusi's clinic is a window into the ease with which some residents have been buying officially sanctioned pot for more than two years. [continues 1704 words]
Inside District of Columbia
