There's one thing that Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all agreed on: expanding military aid to Latin America to fight the so-called "Drug War."

A new phase of the Drug War began in 2000 under President Bill Clinton, with $1.3 billion in "emergency" funding to fight cocaine production in Colombia by destroying the raw material for it -- coca plants. President George W. Bush continued the fight, which sent nearly $6 billion in aid to Colombia between 2000 and 2008. When cartel violence began to spiral out of control in Mexico, he shepherded hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Mexican military. President Barack Obama initially followed in his predecessors' footsteps, but now appears to be headed down a wiser path.

[continues 573 words]

DANBURY -- The iconic program that has taught and encouraged schoolchildren to avoid drugs and make wiser decisions in life has become a victim of the tough economy.

Beginning this month, the Danbury Police Department no longer is offering the D.A.R.E. program -- Drug Abuse Resistance Education -- in the city's public and private schools.

New Milford canceled the drug-prevention program as of September citing budget woes, but it continues in Bethel because of the school community's fundraising efforts.

[continues 459 words]

When Neil Young warbled about the needle and the damage done; when Steppenwolf begged for God to damn the pusher; the focus was on the drug, its harmful effects and the evil people who sold it on the street.

Good people have tried to slow the scourge of mind-altering drugs, calling for everything from brutal enforcement ("... (I)f I were the president of this land ... I'd declare total war on The Pusher man/I'd cut him if he stands, and I'd shoot him if he'd run/Yes I'd kill him with my Bible and my razor and my gun," sang Steppenwolf in 1968), to legalization, the solution preferred by many leftists and libertarians.

[continues 371 words]

The editorial titled "Victimless crime? Tell that to Cordova family," published Dec. 27, made the common mistake of confusing drug-related crime with prohibition-related crime. Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs, while demand remains constant, only increases the profitability of drug trafficking. For addictive drugs such as heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime, it fuels crime.

With alcohol prohibition repealed, liquor bootleggers no longer gun each other down in drive-by shootings, nor do consumers go blind drinking unregulated bathtub gin. While U.S. politicians ignore the drug war's historical precedent, European countries are embracing harm reduction, a public health alternative based on the principle that both drug abuse and prohibition potentially cause harm.

[continues 91 words]

During the coming holiday week many will turn to illegal recreational drugs. For some it will be an occasional dabble with an illicit substance to get silly for a time and forget life's burdens. For others it will be part of an ongoing way of life. For some people their use is, or soon will be, an addiction that separates them from normality and estranges them from loved ones.

But for few will it be a "victimless crime."

Yes, there will be the occasional marijuana user who partakes of a crop grown over the summer in a yard or in a neighbor's basement. Most users, however, neither know nor care where the substance they use originated.

[continues 483 words]

In 10 Years, Weed Could Be Legal -- And Taxed -- In Connecticut

Connecticut's raised taxes on millionaires and cigarettes. We've raised the fees you pay on cars, hunting licenses and almost everything else, and it's still not enough to solve the state's budget blues.

So why let producers and consumers of what is perhaps the state's third most valuable agricultural crop off without paying a penny in taxes?

According to a 2006 study of marijuana production in this nation, the market value of Connecticut-grown grass is at least $32.2 million a year. That's less than greenhouse and nursery crops and the totals for veggies and fruit, but more than shade-grown tobacco brings in.

[continues 576 words]

While Connecticut and many other states are trying to figure out how to close their massive budget shortfalls, the Dutch are trying to figure out what to do with their closed prisons. While the Netherlands has a population of about 16.5 million, it has only about 12,000 prisoners. On the other hand, the United States has more than 2,300,000 prisoners. If my math is correct, the U. S. has 18.2 fold the Dutch general population and 191.6 fold their prison population. Why the disparity?

[continues 52 words]

Taking the control of Hartford's $42 million drug market from criminals and placing it in the hands of citizens who will be responsible for regulating it seems a strikingly sensible strategy.

Unless we try a new approach that includes regulating and taxing the use of marijuana, and emphasizing harm reduction measures for problem drug users by getting them into treatment rather than jail, the trade in illegal drugs will continue to ravage our Capital. Although the serious crime rate is lower, homicides (directly related to the drug trade) are up. While large employers, cultural institutions and excellent restaurants attract many visitors to Hartford daily, hundreds more stay away for fear of violence.

[continues 632 words]

Given state government's financial collapse, state budget director Robert L. Genuario says Connecticut no longer can afford "sacred cows" in public budgeting.

Of course Genuario means only to nick a little more at the margins of state spending, like state grants to municipalities. But if Connecticut ever got serious about "sacred cows," it would find that public policy is a teeming, stinky stockyard of mistaken premises.

Maybe the one staring everyone in the face right now is drug criminalization, since a retired Hartford police officer is on trial for manslaughter and assault in the fatal shooting and wounding of two young men in the city in 2005. The officer and a federal alcohol, tobacco, and firearms agent were prowling the city at night looking for trouble -- guns and drugs.

[continues 378 words]

INSIDE the green neon sign shaped like a marijuana leaf is a red cross. It serves the fiction that most transactions in the Denver store involve medicine.

The U.S. Justice Department has announced that federal laws against marijuana would not be enforced for possession that conforms to states' laws. In 2000, Colorado decided to make medical marijuana legal. Since Justice's announcement, the average age of the 400 people a day filling prescriptions at the state's medical marijuana dispensaries has fallen precipitously. Many new customers are college students.

[continues 595 words]

Dear editor,

Regarding George Will's Nov. 30, column, the drug war is largely a war on marijuana smokers. In 2008, there were 847,863 marijuana arrests in the United States, almost 90 percent for simple possession. At a time when state and local governments are laying off police, firefighters and teachers, this country continues to spend enormous public resources criminalizing Americans who prefer marijuana to martinis. The end result of this ongoing culture war is not necessarily lower rates of use.

[continues 85 words]

The U.S. Justice Department recently announced that federal laws against marijuana would not be enforced for possession of marijuana that conforms to states' laws. In 2000, Colorado legalized medical marijuana. Since the Justice Department's decision, the average age of the 400 persons a day seeking "prescriptions" at Colorado's multiplying medical marijuana dispensaries has fallen precipitously. Many new customers are college students.

Customers -- this, not patients, is what most really are -- tell doctors at the dispensaries that they suffer from insomnia, anxiety, headaches, premenstrual syndrome, "chronic pain," whatever, and pay nominal fees for "prescriptions." Most really just want to smoke pot.

[continues 533 words]

DENVER - Inside the green neon sign, which is shaped like a marijuana leaf, is a red cross. The cross serves the fiction that most transactions in the store - which is what it really is - involve medicine.

The Justice Department recently announced that federal laws against marijuana would not be enforced for possession of marijuana that conforms to states' laws. In 2000, Colorado legalized medical marijuana. Since Justice's decision, the average age of the 400 persons a day seeking "prescriptions" at Colorado's multiplying medical marijuana dispensaries has fallen precipitously. Many new customers are college students.

[continues 670 words]

NORWALK -- A city police detective who led an FBI task force to investigate rampant drug dealing at South Norwalk's Washington Village public housing complex three years ago said he could not have imagined at the operation's outset how successful it would be.

But after the 18-month operation by the FBI's Safe Streets Task Force snared 22 men and women, each later convicted for drug dealing, and seized several kilograms of narcotics, eight guns and more than $20,000 in cash, Detective Terry Blake, an 11-year department veteran, said the public housing complex on Water Street is a much safer place to live.

[continues 1832 words]

There are few things quite as humorous as watching a group of college students pleading before city councils and legislators for marijuana reform. Their hazy lamentations usually fall on the deaf ears of public administrators who like their careers too much to get behind a youth's right to space out and devour pizza.

Though there are some compelling arguments for the legalization of marijuana, it will not occur any time in the near future for a variety of reasons.

The first reason is because no tenured lawmaker or politician that wants to be re-elected will spend their limited political capital on legalizing marijuana.

[continues 505 words]

CANTON -- - Parents are appealing a decision by a state Superior Court judge who dismissed a civil action they brought against the board of education after a 2008 drug sweep at Canton middle and high schools.

The plaintiffs -- Harold Burbank, Marianne Burbank and Jane Latus -- contended that the unannounced, "suspicionless" sweep June 5, 2008, was unconstitutional, and they sought a court order requiring that parents be notified at least 48 hours before school officials and police conducted future K-9 sweeps.

Harold Burbank, acting as the parents' attorney, argued in part that the school board's policy permitting the searches not only harms students, but also interferes with the parents' right to control the upbringing of their children. The action was filed in late March.

[continues 164 words]

For decade after decade, citizens have mourned, sobbed, wrung their hands and called for an end to violence in their neighborhoods. Politicians' rhetoric has changed very little as they ask for more funds or more cops to "solve" the problem. Instead of repeating the same destructive cycle for further generations, we need to do what Courant columnist Helen Ubinas has asked us to do: "Tell The Truth About Violence" [Oct. 18].

It is absurd to believe that this is a matter for law enforcement. Hartford spends an estimated $41 million on law enforcement and corrections, and 70 percent of the crime and violence is related to the illegal drug trade. We need to create a new urban paradigm of peace.

[continues 135 words]

Connecticut's sensation the other day was the arrest of a woman from Windham for a weeklong crime spree, the robbery of six banks from West Springfield to Westerly, R.I. The woman, 34, has a criminal record involving drugs and prostitution and police believe she committed the robberies to support her drug addiction. That suspicion about her was shared in a television station's interview with a friend who lamented emotionally his inability to stop her. The friend speculated that her robberies were a "cry for help." Indeed, the woman did not disguise herself as, a bit ridiculously, she told bank tellers that she was carrying a bomb in a handbag.

[continues 661 words]

President Barack Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, should be commended for initiating some basic reforms in U.S. drug policy. One of his first sensible acts was to drop the phrase "War on Drugs." "Regardless of how you try to explain to people that it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he explained. "We're not at war with people in this country."

As the former chief of the Seattle Police, he lived under some of the most progressive drug laws in the nation. When it comes to addressing the basic premise of our failed drug policies, however, he's trapped in a linguistic box.

[continues 374 words]

Only 22 of Connecticut's 169 towns have not had at least one reported fatal overdose from heroin or pharmaceutical narcotic painkillers between 1997 and 2007, according to a study recently released by the Yale School of Public Health.

The study, culled from data from the state's medical examiner's office, found that more than 2,200 people in Connecticut fatally overdosed on pharmaceutical narcotic painkillers, heroin or methadone during that time.

Robert Heimer, the study's lead investigator, found that the number of fatal heroin overdoses has decreased to 111 annually in recent years, from an average of 131 a year from 1997 to 2000. But deaths from prescription narcotic painkillers and methadone have more than doubled, to 113 a year from 2005 to 2007 from 43 a year in the late 1990s. The researchers also found a shift in narcotic painkillers abuse and addiction from the state's cities to its suburbs, with deadly results.

[continues 100 words]