MASSILLON, OH -A substance abuse problem may have driven a former Massillon union leader to embezzle more than $15,000 in cash, according to prosecutors. Kenneth Saltz Jr., ex-president of United Steelworkers Local 1124, was placed on two years probation last month by U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Gaughan. Saltz also was ordered to serve six months electronically-monitored house arrest, court records show. As part of the sentence, Saltz was ordered to abstain from drugs and alcohol. Local 1124 president Ray Perez declined to comment Tuesday. In September, Saltz pleaded guilty to stealing $15,800 from the union. According to court documents, Saltz forged and cashed 55 union checks totaling $14,042 between May and August 2006. Saltz reportedly wrote the checks on an account funded by union dues. [continues 193 words]
In response to the editorial of Dec. 28, "Meth is a nightmare that won't go away," Government is partly responsible for America's high addiction rates to honest hard drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin, due to its discredited prohibition of cannabis (marijuana). The question isn't if, but rather what percentage of America's drug problem is due to prohibiting the relatively safe, socially acceptable, God-given plant cannabis? How many youths and adults try cannabis and realize it's not nearly as harmful as taught in government environments? Then they think other substances must not be so bad either, only to become addicted to deadly drugs. [continues 70 words]
Short letter in response to Evert Fowle's comments regarding the medical marijuana trial recently held in Superior Court in Skowhegan. We, patient and provider, won; Fowle's office lost. Fowle says, "it's past time to overhaul the medical marijuana law." That's one thing he might be right about; it could use a good overhaul, but for the medical patients benefit, not his. It is 9 years old and was improved once, ever so slightly, a few years ago by increasing the amount of marijuana patients can possess from 1 1/4 ounces to 2 1/2 ounces. We should be allowed at least a month's supply like any other medicine, but that's another subject. [continues 74 words]
HUNTINGTON -- Cabell County will start its adult drug court within weeks, making it one five new drug courts set to open this year in West Virginia, according to the county's Chief Probation Officer Johnny Winkler. The program is funded through state Supreme Court of Appeals. Cabell County's program will target felony offenders whose nonviolent crimes are committed to fuel a drug addiction. For some candidates, the opportunity will be the only alternative to prison. Winkler said repeated arrests and past problems will rule them ineligible for other programs. He hopes drug court provides a structured lifestyle and an opportunity for changed lives. [continues 466 words]
ROCKFORD - A rash of auto thefts in a crime hot spot versus a rash of residential burglaries in a neighborhood. Both are what police classify as "type 1" crimes. If you were to put a dollar amount on the value of the property being stolen, police should concentrate their resources on stopping the car thefts, right? Wrong. "People coming home from work and interrupting a burglary, that's a homicide waiting to happen," Winnebago County Sheriff Dick Meyers said. Starting next week, the sheriff's department will deploy a new tactical unit to curtail any number of recurring crimes such as armed robberies, gang violence, arson, burglaries or any criminal activity that is found to be on the rise and placing peoples' lives in jeopardy. [continues 448 words]
A man who once spoke to students about the dangers of drugs for a police program was sentenced to a federal jail term on Monday. Clinton Augustin McIntosh, 40, of Red Deer pleaded guilty to a single armed robbery charge and a charge of resisting police when he appeared in provincial court. He was sentenced to an additional 26 months in jail after receiving a three-year term. Judge John Holmes reduced the sentence by 10 months based on five months that McIntosh spent in remand awaiting his trial. [continues 387 words]
CHARLESTON - A judge dismissed drug charges that could have brought a Mattoon woman up to 40 years in prison after deciding there was nothing to indicate she was involved in a methamphetamine conspiracy. Lisa A. Dufrain, 37, 417 N. 20th St., had been accused of obtaining cold medicine with pseudoephedrine to use to make methamphetamine between December 2007 and April of last year. In reviewing the prosecution's evidence, Circuit Judge Mitchell Shick concluded that no one was able to say that Dufrain knew that the cold medicine she obtained was going to be used for drug manufacturing. That meant it wasn't certain that she obtained the medicine with the criminal intent needed to be proven guilty, Shick decided. [continues 55 words]
That there could be as many as 200 people in Mullingar using heroin is a shock. But to anyone who sits in a regular basis in Mullingar courthouse, it's probably less of a shock than to most people. At every court sitting in Mullingar, there are appearances by people caught in possession of drugs - and by people in possession of drugs with intent to sell them or supply them to others. Discussion on Ireland's drug problem has taken something of a back seat in the wake of our plummeting financial situation, which has, for a year now, dominated the headlines. In fact, one might even have thought that the drugs problem had more or less gone away. [continues 390 words]
It's disgusting to realize the prison industry's unions have successfully lobbied to cage more and more citizens over drug-related so-called crimes ("Drug Crimes Keep Jails Full In '08", Dec. 27, 2008, Tribune-Star), even though most are surely nonviolent in nature. It means a great Christmas for prison industry employees at the cost of freedom for citizens who are otherwise law-abiding people except for the sequel to prohibition. The prison industry unions should be proud. What a sham. Stan White Dillon, Colo. [end]
Re: "Banning smokes in pharmacies wise," Editorial, Jan. 4. Why don't you go the whole nine yards and brazenly call for a complete ban on tobacco? That line of nanny state "zealotry of unwarranted invasions into people's privacy" has already been clearly crossed. Instead of feigning concern for people's privacy and keeping up duplicitous pretences, it's only apt for you to embrace that next step in the war on tobacco. Bruce Korol Calgary [end]
The meth lab is the moonshine still of the 21st Century. If we allowed adult citizens of Mississippi access to the same amphetamines that we give to Air Force pilots to fly long missions, Mississippi would no longer have a meth problem. The solution to meth and meth labs has been in front of you the whole time. The war on drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral domestic policy since slavery and Jim Crow. Drug dealers only fear one thing: legalization. Howard J. Wooldridge Education specialist Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Washington, D.C. [end]
I learned something about how drug prohibition generates crime during my 18 years of police service. Eighty percent of my property-crime case load was caused by addicts needing money to pay sky-high prices for crack, etc. Legal crack would cost an addict about a dollar per day, as would heroin and amphetamines. Ronald Shafer (Letters, Dec. 30) worries about what drug dealers would do without their prohibition-generated jobs. The one million teens who sell drugs would begin flipping burgers and mowing yards. Serious thugs will rob banks where we will capture or kill them. Or was Mr. Shafer suggesting to continue prohibition as a jobs program for bad guys? Howard J. Wooldridge Education Specialist Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Washington [end]
The Midland Regional Drugs Task Force (MRDTF) has applied for a mobile needle exchange and is calling for the creation of rehabilitation clinics for the region in 2009. There could be between 150 and 200 people using heroin in Mullingar, Open Door Project's Lead Addiction Counsellor told the Westmeath Examiner this week. "I suspect it is somewhere in the region of 150 heroin users in Mullingar, possibly 150 to 200," said Mr Declan Hughes who works on a daily basis with addicts at the drop-in-centre. [continues 735 words]
Many Bay area medical cannabis dispensary operators, including Marin's own lyrical Lynette Shaw, rallied in Downtown San Francisco on December 20th in protest of the Drug Enforcement Administration's recent execution of another attack on medical cannabis dispensaries. In an effort to overcome the obstacles raised in the raid tactics the DEA employed in earlier attempts to circumvent a compassionate community of medical cannabis connoisseurs, the feds have resorted to sending letters to landlords who rent commercial space to medical cannabis providers, first in Southern California back in July and more recently here in the Bay area. Landlords who own space occupied by medical cannabis dispensaries in Marin, San Francisco, and Alameda counties received letters the second week in December. [continues 1128 words]