Federal Officials Catching More At Mexican Border HIDALGO -- Federal law enforcement agents are arresting more people at Hidalgo County international bridges smuggling Mexican-made methamphetamine into this country, something clearly backed up at local drug treatment programs. Easily manufactured with accessible ingredients in homemade laboratories, methamphetamine, commonly called meth, is a highly additive drug that has reached epidemic proportions in some parts of the country. Crystal meth, a purer form and stronger form of the drug than the powder version, can be inhaled by smoking, and is particularly popular among young clubgoers. [continues 718 words]
PHARRA- A 17-year-old PSJA North High School student was arrested Wednesday morning after he allegedly showed up to school with marijuana-laced brownies. According to police reports, Antonio Saenz Jr. was in a classroom at the start of the day when he offered a substitute teacher a piece of a brownie he had on top of his desk. When the teacher picked it up, she noticed that the brownie smelled like marijuana. "Two other students smelled the brownie, tasted it, and told her that it tasted like marijuana," municipal court records said. [continues 179 words]
Police Uncover Weapon, Drug Cache Inside Mission Home MISSION - Police flooded a quiet neighborhood Wednesday afternoon when a case of road rage ended with someone shooting at two vehicles. It started about 2 p.m. just south of Farm-to-Market Road 495, said police spokesman Sgt. Martin Garza. The driver and passengers of a black Chevrolet pickup truck apparently got into a driving confrontation with the drivers and passengers of two other vehicles, a charcoal GMC Sierra and a Pontiac Grand Am. [continues 424 words]
McALLEN - Jesus Rosas struggled to gather his thoughts, unable to describe the emotional rollercoaster he's been on the past few months. But even words would do no justice to the anguish clear in his tired eyes. He would rather not talk about the sleepless nights, the emptiness in his heart or coming to terms with the fact that his youngest of four children, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Rosas, stands accused of leading a drug smuggling ring in Bogota, Colombia, and is now behind bars at Fort Bliss in El Paso awaiting court-martial in November. The accusation has deeply embarrassed U.S. officials and is raising concern from Colombians who said their president should revoke treaties granting immunities to soldiers serving in their country. [continues 1206 words]
To the editor: Juan Ochoa is right to point to our obsession with the drug war, and especially marijuana, as the reason our criminal justice system is so ineffective. The U.S. uses about 16 tons of heroin in a year and about 220 tons of cocaine. Meanwhile, the law struggles to track down the 20,000 tons of marijuana used each year and mostly grown in the U.S. Combined with 700,000 annual arrests for marijuana violations -- more than for all violent crimes -- we have swamped our prisons, police and courts with no positive results in 30 years. And all over a drug substantially less dangerous than alcohol. [continues 119 words]
To the editor: After reading this Monitor headline ("Aparicio autopsy: Marijuana, alcohol," Aug. 3), I asked myself this: If all other employees of the city and county are subject to drug screenings, why are not sitting judges? I, personally, would not like to be tried by a judge who might be high. Thomas Morgan Alamo [end]
To the editor: I would like to explain to Ms. Faith Wilkinson why pedophiles receive probation and not jail time for arguably the worst crimes that could be committed against society's most vulnerable, our children ("Why probation for pedophiles?" Aug. 4). The answer can be traced back to the root of all evil: money. With our prisons swelled to overflow with petty pot peddlers and our law enforcement resources drained fighting a losing war on drugs, there simply isn't enough money to prosecute and jail less lucrative offenders like pedophiles. [continues 218 words]
To the editor: Major kudos to Larry Seguin for his outstanding letter ("U. S. addicted to the war on drugs," July 5). Our drug war habit keeps getting more and more expensive. In 1969, our federal drug enforcement budget was $65 million. Last year it was $19.2 billion. (These figures don't include the cost of incarceration nor the state and local costs). The $19.2 billion is more than a 295-fold increase. In 1969, coffee sold for 25 cents a cup. If the price of coffee had increased at the same rate as our drug war budget, coffee would now sell for almost $75 a cup. More than $75 with sales tax. What have we received for our so-called investment? Nothing. Illegal drugs are just as available today as they were in 1969. Our drug war addiction is a habit we cannot afford. Kirk Muse Mesa, Ariz. [end]
To the editor: Your editorial aptly notes that the patients, doctors and families of medical marijuana patients refuse to back down ("Down, but not out: Ruling against medical pot may help cause" June 23). We adamantly stand our ground in demanding that patients be allowed to medicate with their medicine of choice as recommended by our doctors and other health care providers. No longer should patients be restricted to only using government-approved, heavy-duty narcotics which are often addictive with horrible side effects, up to and including death. [continues 167 words]
To the editor: Re: "Down, but not out: Ruling against medical pot may help cause" (June 23). The most interesting aspect of the battle for legal medical marijuana is the utter hypocrisy of the Republican Party getting into a lather over Terri Schiavo while ignoring the plight of hundreds of thousands of seriously ill people who can benefit from marijuana. Tragic as Terri Schiavo's case was, she was only one person -- a person now dead -- compared to hundreds of thousands of living patients who can get relief using cannabis. The GOP came down on the unpopular side of both issues. [continues 136 words]
The next target of the anti-drug hysteria that stems from our nation's drug war could well be something many Americans have never heard of: marijuana-flavored lollipops. Marketed by several makers under names such as "Pot Suckers" or "Chronic Candy," the suckers contain no THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. But that doesn't stop rabid drug warriors and well-meaning activists who worry that pot-flavored treats will send the wrong message to kids. Such hand-wringing is misplaced; many children grew up "puffing" on candy cigarettes and bubble-gum cigars, yet they aren't addicted to tobacco. Most people, even children, know there is a difference between candy that tastes like pot and the real McCoy. But not everyone is so sure. [continues 240 words]
The 16 Texas counties that border Mexico face challenges that the rest of the state - the rest of the nation - might have a hard time understanding. From the intricacies of a border economy in which customers walk to another country for afternoon shopping trips to the irrigation needs of farmers in a drought-prone region, life along the Rio Grande contains elements not found anywhere else in Texas. Add law enforcement in the form of anti-illegal immigration and anti-drug efforts, along with security concerns in the ongoing battle against terrorists, and you get police work intertwined with foreign policy. [continues 412 words]
To the editor: Thanks for the summary on medical marijuana ("Down, but not out: Ruling against medical pot may help cause," June 23). The apparent passage of a bill in Rhode Island on the heels of the Supreme Court decision speaks well for the ultimate triumph of compassion, reason and the people's voice. Meanwhile in Texas, a bill failed that would only have allowed a jury to hear evidence that a defendant was using marijuana for medical purposes. In a state where some 75 percent of citizens approve of medical use and government estimates some 80,000 teens sell marijuana to class mates -- enough for one in every classroom from eighth grade on, courtesy of prohibition and the illegal drug trade that tempts and employs the young -- we had better wonder if the fanaticism and official misinformation displayed regarding medical marijuana has infected our ability to act rationally on any matter of drug policy. Jerry Epstein, Houston [end]
To the editor: The war on drugs today is mostly about marijuana ("Medical marijuana: U.S. must turn to Congress after ruling," June 8). Marijuana arrests, convictions, incarcerations and property seizures constitute the great majority of "drug-war incidents." Without marijuana prohibition, the war on drugs and its bloated budgets would simply not be justifiable -- nor the DEA, nor foreign intervention, nor political anti-drug posturing. Without marijuana prohibition, the whole war on drugs would soon fall apart. America is in the throes of an addiction, to be sure. But that dependency is on drug prohibition far more than on drug use. Enormous and wildly increasing budgets are squandered on ever-higher doses of the drug prohibition habit, and vehement denials that the prohibition habit is the problem are heard along with pronouncements that with one more big fix of "enforcement and interdiction," the drug problem will be resolved. And in great irrational fear of the imagined rigors of withdrawal, the addict is ready to commit any disgrace, deception, crime or doublethink whatsoever to get his fix. Drug prohibition has become a monkey on the back of democracy itself. Larry Seguin, Lisbon, N.Y. [end]
To the editor: Our federal government is lying to us about the potential medical efficacy of cannabis. The Bush administration, via its mouthpieces in the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Drug Enforcement Administration, tells us that cannabis is as medically useless as heroin. The ONDCP and DEA insist that cannabis use remain a criminal offense. At the federal level, that means medical patients and their providers are subject to mandatory minimum sentences in a federal prison that can be a decade or longer. [continues 53 words]
Medical marijuana is back on the political agenda, in some ways, following the splash of a Supreme Court decision earlier this month. The House of Representatives last Wednesday voted on the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which would have provided that no Department of Justice funds be used to go after patients in states with medical marijuana laws. Although the measure failed, the number voting for it increased to 161 from 148 last year. Only 15 Republicans - the party that used to say it was for states' rights and local control - supported the amendment to the Justice Department budget appropriation. [continues 343 words]
To the editor: What's the real impact of state-level medical marijuana laws on interstate commerce? Patients with the option of legally obtaining marijuana under a doctor's recommendation don't rely on the black market. If the federal government decides to focus federal law enforcement resources on busting voter-approved medical marijuana suppliers, desperate patients will turn to street dealers for their medicine. The U.S. Supreme Court effectively confirmed organized crime's monopoly on marijuana distribution. International drug cartels are no doubt thrilled with the court's ruling. It's now up to Congress to decide whether or not to maintain the status quo. [continues 117 words]
To the editor: This is in response to two letters published on Sunday. In response to Mike Burns ("Minutemen did succeed," May 29): Like in drug enforcement, when you focus on an area for a while, the traffickers will move and continue to operate. By the way, I hope and pray that the ACLU and other civil rights organization will be around for many years to come. Can you imagine, these organizations being around when the "gringos" came and stole the Southwest? They would have made an effort in stopping the murders and the stealing of our lands. [continues 208 words]
The first thing to keep in mind when considering the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling that federal law still prohibits any possession of marijuana, even for medical purposes, is that the decision does not invalidate state laws allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes with a physician's recommendation. The second point is that even the court's majority decision conceded a great deal to proponents of legitimizing the medical use of marijuana. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, rather explicitly challenged reform advocates to work on Congress if they want the law changed. [continues 344 words]
To the editor: Re: "Drug war is just law enforcement" (May 15): I agree that alcohol and nicotine are deadly substances -- unlike marijuana, which should also be legal. It's wrong to criminalize a person for using something less dangerous than legal substances, and it's wrong to spend our resources waging war on the highly popular plant and its millions of consumers, when our country faces far more serious drug problems (crack, heroin). In case anyone hasn't noticed, we're losing the war on deadly narcotics, and it's time to reform the drug war. [continues 124 words]
To the editor: Mable Cowgill doesn't appreciate The Monitor printing anti-drug war letters? While thrashing the messenger, she offers no wisdom as to the message ("Pro-legalization letter writers don't live here," May 1). The Monitor printed letters on both sides of the issue and left it to the readers to make an intelligent decision. The reader then has the option of censorship by throwing his or her newspaper away. Many citizens feel that with record amounts of cocaine and heroin coming in from Colombia and Afghanistan, the drug war is a failure and is collapsing our society. [continues 60 words]
To the editor: Mable Cowgill's letter ("Pro-legalization letter writers don't live here" (May 1), certainly misses my reasons for writing newspapers about America's war on drugs. I urge reform of drug laws because they have made my Land of the Free the largest prison system on Earth. The U.S. has more prisoners than Russia or China. According to the U.S. Justice Department, the U.S. had 2,131,180 women, children and men behind bars last year, a 2.3 percent rise over 2003. Our rate of incarceration is 726 per 100,000 Americans, seven to 10 times as many as most other democracies. The rate for England is 142 per 100,000; for France, 91; for Japan, 58. [continues 201 words]
To the editor: Mr. Jose Melendez made the point that since alcohol and nicotine are legal yet dangerous, cocaine, marijuana, and heroin should also be legal ("Drug war works -- for criminals," May 8). Mr. Melendez theorized that this double standard is part of a conspiracy to help certain industries profit. However, comparing cigarettes to heroin or beer to cocaine is like comparing a firecracker to a hand grenade. Both are dangerous, but one is a tad more destructive. Mr. Celerino Castillo ("Past 35 years show drug war will never be won," May 1) stated that education and treatment were the solution to the problem (Mr. Castillo also made unsubstantiated allegations of massive and widespread corruption). While education and treatment are important, a couple of things seem to have eluded Mr. Castillo. [continues 164 words]
To the editor: DEA Special Agent Will Glaspy used 9/11 victims as a benchmark by which to measure illicit drug deaths and circular logic to promote the war on (some) drugs ("The drug war is working fine," April 24). Actually, well over 100 times more Americans die from drug use every year than were lost in the 2001 attacks. Their deaths were caused by legal uses of dangerous and defective nicotine, alcohol, chemical and pharmaceutical products. Exempted from prosecution for those deaths, manufacturers of legal medications, intoxicants and poisons (along with the incarceration and "treatment" industries) earn many billions of dollars in profits thanks to the restraint of any lawful trade in coca, cannabis and poppies. [continues 117 words]
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a Washington Post article Saturday that the "fight against methamphetamines received a major boost recently when four of the United States' largest food and drug retailers decided to put certain cold medicines behind the pharmacy counter." She wants federal legislation to accomplish something similar. Limiting consumer access to cold medicines that contain the ingredient pseudoephedrine will create inconvenience for consumers and could create concerns about privacy. But to imagine that it will do much to limit the availability of methamphetamines is the stuff of fantasy. [continues 206 words]
To the editor: Re: "The drug war is working fine" (April 24), by Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Will R. Glaspy. This is the response from an agent trying to keep his job, instead of doing his job by telling the truth. The drug war will never be won, because drug enforcement has not worked for the past 35 years or so. What's the answer? Let's try education, prevention, treatment and fighting corruption within U. S. federal agencies. We have tried the John Wayne approach, and it just doesn't work. We have spent trillions of dollars in drug enforcement in source countries like Colombia and Peru, and we have not made a dent. [continues 175 words]
To the editor: The three letters to The Monitor on Sunday regarding drug prohibition once again tested my inner perception and God-given insight ("We can't make drugs disappear entirely," "The drug war is working fine," "Our war on drugs is not working," April 24). Over the last 21 years of subscribing to The Monitor, the pro-drug views of this liberal paper were perplexing and disappointing, sometimes to the point of nausea. I've seen the torments of such insane drug use. [continues 132 words]
To the editor: Your editorial ("Nothing to show: U.S. anti-drug policy fails in Colombia," April 12) demonstrates a lack of knowledge regarding drug abuse and addiction, and the success that we have achieved in dealing with this social problem. You claim the U.S. has wasted billions of dollars in its anti-drug efforts, but for those people who have been saved from drug addiction, this is hardly wasted money. Our fight against drug abuse and addiction is an ongoing struggle and should be treated like any other social problem. No one is advocating the legalization of child abuse because we have not been able to eliminate it; nor should we legalize drugs. [continues 202 words]
To the editor: Re: "Nothing to show: U. S. anti-drug policy fails in Colombia" (April 12). Suppose it would somehow be possible to start at the south bank of the Rio Grande and totally destroy everything all the way to the Straits of Magellan. Say we covered every square inch of land with concrete, leaving not a person, tree, animal, insect or blade of grass alive. Would that solve America's drug problem? Of course not. Production would go up somewhere else, but it would not disappear. [continues 81 words]
To the editor: I'm writing about your outstanding editorial: "Nothing to show: U. S. anti-drug policy fails in Colombia" (April 12). I'd like to add that it's not just in Colombia that our drug policy has failed. In the past 36 years, we have completely wasted about $1 trillion attempting to nullify the immutable law of supply and demand with our so-called war on drugs. The net result: Drugs are just as available today as they were in 1969. [continues 124 words]
To the editor: By God, it was wonderful to see such bold and evident truth in The Monitor regarding the failure of the drug war ("Nothing to show: U.S. anti-drug policy fails in Colombia," April 12). Your editorial stated cleanly what has become ever more obvious. The U.S.-mandated/world drug policy does indeed correlate to your phrase: "Insanity has been described as doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results each time." Ninety years, more than half a trillion dollars frittered away, tens of millions of non-violent U.S. citizens' and their families' lives destroyed by drug arrests, needless overdose deaths, black-market purchases funding the terrorists, cartels and violent gangs that mean us harm. [continues 61 words]
British historian Thomas Carlyle once wrote, "Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist." That attitude might be too dismissive of what drives economies. But it's the attitude that keeps the international war on drugs chugging along, destroying at least as many lives as the drugs themselves. The law of supply and demand is routinely ignored as developed nations co-opt undeveloped and underdeveloped nations by offering them aid in exchange for attacking drugs at their sources. Such is the case in Colombia, where President Alvaro Uribe announced recently that his government would continue with U.S.-backed and funded aerial spraying of coca crops, despite data from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy showing that last year's spraying was ineffective -- Colombia had roughly the same number of acres planted with coca as it did the previous year. [continues 448 words]
McALLEN - Local law enforcement is declaring the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that a trained dog's cold, wet nose does not infringe on man's inalienable right to privacy a crucial victory in the "War on Drugs." "The ruling basically at present communicates to us a stamp of approval," said McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. "Had this ruling gone the other way, it could have severely impacted us." On Jan. 24, Justice John Paul Stevens overturned the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling, writing that "a dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop ... does not violate the Fourth Amendment." [continues 1051 words]
To the editor: I'm writing about Robert Sharpe's outstanding letter ("Marijuana should be legal," Jan. 28). I'd like to add that if tough-on-drugs policies worked, the quixotic goal of a drug-free America would have been reached a long time ago. And if tolerant marijuana laws created more drug use, the Netherlands would have much higher drug usage rates than the United States. They do not. In fact, the Dutch use marijuana and other recreational drugs at much lower rates than Americans do. See the Web site: www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm. [continues 75 words]
To the editor: I appreciate the fair and balanced reporting that The Monitor does on the drug war. I read your story on the young man that killed his mother ("24-year-old confesses to murdering his mother," Feb. 1). You resisted the temptation to imply that drugs caused this young man to kill his mother, even if he himself would make that excuse. Other newspapers (such as the Houston Chronicle) use misleading headlines and lie by omission to sensationalize our country's drug war. I am glad The Monitor still has its integrity and is an honest source for news. Tammera Halphen Houston [end]
To the editor: Your editorial ("Sentencing Guidelines: Supreme Court restores some judicial discretion" Jan 18) raises valid concerns about the need for Congress to exercise prudence as they examine federal sentencing guidelines in the wake of the most recent Supreme Court rulings. At the same time, Congress should give careful reconsideration to the overall justification for such sentences, especially as applied to low-level drug offenders. Drug abuse has its roots in a combination of physical, mental and spiritual problems. None of these are addressed by taking the offender and caging them in a federal prison for years or - in the case of many mandatory minimum sentences - decades. And despite the feds having jailed over 1 million such offenders over the past 20 years, the demand for illicit drugs and the illegal trade that feeds it remain a steady constant. [continues 74 words]
Perhaps it's not the stuff of massive outrage. But a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued last Monday -- which allows drug-sniffing dogs to sniff a car during a routine traffic stop -- represents another small erosion of privacy and personal freedom. Freedoms are generally lost little by little, often by giving authorities just a little more latitude in difficult or ambivalent circumstances. We fear Illinois v. Caballes, which reversed the Illinois Supreme Court, will come to be seen as another small step in the slow but steady erosion of privacy. [continues 280 words]
Feds Refuse To Defend Free-Speech Assault Congratulations to Solicitor General Paul Clement for deciding, and saying in a letter to Congress, that "the government does not have a viable argument to advance in the statute's defense and will not appeal the district court's decision." It is rare for a solicitor general, the government's trial lawyer, to refuse to defend in court a statute passed by Congress. Charles Fried told The Wall Street Journal he could remember doing it only twice when he served in the post from 1985 to 1989. [continues 239 words]
To the editor: If health outcomes instead of cultural norms determined drug laws, marijuana would be legal. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. Marijuana can be harmful if abused, but jail cells are inappropriate as a health intervention and ineffective as a deterrent. The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican migration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive at best. White Americans did not even begin to smoke pot until a soon-to-be entrenched government bureaucracy began funding reefer madness propaganda. [continues 63 words]
It is not difficult to criticize the circuitous way the U.S. Supreme Court went about downgrading -- but not quite eliminating -- the controversial sentencing "guidelines" Congress set up in 1984. The high court might have created less confusion if it had simply declared the entire system unconstitutional and told Congress to try again. On balance, however, the court reached a constructive result. The federal sentencing guidelines had created intolerable confusion and injustice and had to go. The court didn't fix the entire problem, but it made a respectable start. [continues 526 words]
