The Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission has informed Glynn County Superior Court Judge Amanda Williams it would proceed with action that could result in her removal from the bench.

She is charged with 12 violations of judicial canons including jailing defendants without proper hearings, choosing the judges for cases involving her family members who are lawyers, and having bailiffs handcuff a student who cried in her court, who Williams had admonished for laughing.

Williams and her lawyer, Wallace E. Harrell, could not be reached Wednesday night.

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Two Georgia lawmakers want to drug-test welfare recipients, a controversial policy that's been struck down as unconstitutional in other states.

Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine, and Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, said Thursday they plan to introduce legislation to require people to pass a drug test to qualify for cash welfare.

"Georgia taxpayers have a vested interest in making sure that their hard-earned tax dollars are not being used to subsidize drug addiction," Spencer said in a news release. "In these tough economic times, it is easy to understand that many deserving families need some temporary help until they can bounce back financially - that's why we have public assistance programs like TANF. This additional eligibility requirement will simply ensure that those funds are used for that intended purpose."

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ALBANY -- A federal report issued Monday that could lead to the early release of crack-cocaine offenders has no effect on prisoners in Georgia state prisons, authorities said.

The report does not affect those convicted by my office, nor does it affect prisoners serving sentences under Georgia state law," Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards said. "Georgia has never recognized a difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine."

That has not been the case in federal courts like the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, which includes Albany and four other locations.

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A colonel who fought drug lord Pablo Emilio Escobar and the Medellin cartel in Colombia said the current war against cocaine is nothing like it was in the 1970s and '80s.

In an exclusive interview at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation Thursday at Fort Benning, Col. William A. Galindo said through interpreter Ana Brewington that the impact of cocaine in Colombia and the United States has declined due to the presence of the police force and law enforcement.

Galindo, an instructor at the institute for the last 18 months, has served in the Colombian Army since age 15 and has more than 30 years of service. The war against cocaine has taken him to jungles, remote villages and urban areas to combat the manufacturing and trafficking of the drug.

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Collaboration Is Key in Transient Drug Trade

On a frigid Wednesday last January, Benny Jones expected to collect two freshly delivered kilograms of cocaine when he stepped out of the cold and into a south Columbus apartment.

What the Phenix City man encountered, however, was a sting operation involving his own driver, Horace Cromwell, who agreed to facilitate the setup after he was pulled over with the drugs en route from Houston. A camera hidden by the feds in Cromwell's apartment captured footage of the drug deal, according to court documents, and agents waiting in a back room rushed out to make an arrest once the cocaine exchanged hands.

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Students "too cool" for cocaine and other addictive drugs wore sunglasses to school Wednesday to "shade out" narcotics. Others wore red and competed in poster contests and other activities designed to underscore the benefits of living a drug-free lifestyle.

It was all part of the Muscogee County School District's observance of Red Ribbon Week, the annual campaign that teaches students at an early age the dangers of substance abuse.

Students often encounter drugs for the first time on the schoolyard, and local school officials say they want youth to know as much as possible about the risks before they're tempted to take even one hit.

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We're pretty sure the Founding Fathers never thought requiring drug tests of welfare recipients was an unreasonable search. Mostly because they probably never conceived of the possibility that so many people would spend their days wasted, or that their Constitution would leave open the door to welfare to begin with. Oh well.

But if they would be shocked that the government they designed is being used to take money from one person and simply give it to another, they'd be absolutely horrified at the claim that their Constitution would somehow prohibit any strings from being attached to that free money. Such as, oh, drug tests.

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It doesn't take long to get hooked on cocaine, but it can take years for users to shake free from the shackles of addiction.

Users committed to quitting face an uphill battle from the beginning: Intense cravings and miserable withdrawals obstruct the road to abstinence. Chemical changes to the brain affect impulse control, leading to relapse.

Those leading the effort to rid the community of addictive drugs recognize their allure and the obstacles addicts face in getting clean.

"The reason people use drugs to cope is, No. 1, they work," said Phenix City Police Chief Ray Smith. "They create a euphoric situation where you have no problems any more. It's only when you sober up that the problems come rushing back, and they're twice as bad as they were before you started."

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Congress Softens Stance After Years of Criticism

When the feds caught Eddie Tyrone Walker selling crack near a funeral home eight years ago, the Richland, Ga., man was looking at serious prison time. Even after cutting a plea deal, he was sentenced in 2005 to 12 1/2 years behind bars in light of his criminal history and the steep federal penalties for crack-related crimes.

With no chance of parole in the federal system, an early release seemed implausible for the confessed crack dealer. But Walker's outlook has changed considerably over the past few years as the government has softened its rigid stance on the cooked-down version of cocaine.

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Counties Look to Drug Courts As Scientists Test Vaccines

When he finally decided to kick his crack habit, Ted Forrester found strength in a higher power. After three decades of abusing drugs and alcohol, the Phenix City man turned his life over to God and headed down a new path.

"Drugs was just as a symptom of a bigger problem," Forrester said. "I haven't touched it since."

While Forrester has been drug free since 2004, countless cocaine and crack addicts have tried and failed to get clean, succumbing to cravings and stumbling into relapse.

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Using more than one drug is common among substance abusers. When people consume two or more psychoactive drugs together, such as cocaine and alcohol, they compound the danger each drug poses and unknowingly perform a complex chemical experiment within their bodies. Researchers have found that the human liver combines cocaine and alcohol to produce a third substance, cocaethylene, which intensifies cocaine's euphoric effects. Cocaethylene is associated with a greater risk of sudden death than cocaine alone.

Cocaine is a strong central nervous system stimulant that increases levels of dopamine, a brain chemical (or neurotransmitter) associated with pleasure and movement, in the brain's reward circuit. Certain brain cells, or neurons, use dopamine to communicate.

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From Tunnels to Ships, Manufacturers Come Up With New Ways to Get Drug into States

It's a long way from Colombia to Columbus.

But cocaine finds a way, from the farmer's field to the dealer's corner. And between the farmer trying to feed his family and the crackhead feeding his addiction, a lot of people make a lot of money.

It's a multinational trade, ranging the Western Hemisphere as far as from Peru to Canada, as not all the cocaine that comes into the United States stops here. Some keeps going.

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From his job and family to his decaying teeth, Ted R. Bobe lost nearly everything to drug addiction.

Years of smoking crack cocaine and injecting methamphetamine took an irreversible toll on his 50-year-old body, as evidenced by the jagged track marks that cover his arms.

But decades of drug use left a less visible scar as well: Three years clean, Bobe today is making up for lost time with a son who long took a backseat to needles and eight-balls.

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The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 resulted from a powerful combination of social and political forces. The War on Drugs fervor of the 1980s (and '90s), the emergence of crack cocaine and the growing political popularity of mandatory sentences, especially for drugs and drug-related crimes, all seemed to reinforce one another. The cocaine overdose death of basketball star Len Bias and the violence that accompanied the crack epidemic only added to the reaction.

Among the results were some unfortunate and mostly unintended consequences. Get-tough crime laws, of the kind that would make "zero tolerance" a familiar and ultimately discredited term, left little room for judicial discretion or common-sense distinctions. One result was to waste scarce and expensive prison space on nonviolent drug offenders.

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Crack cocaine controlled years of Donnie White's life, but today he enjoys a different kind of high -- an unobstructed view of downtown Columbus near the top of the Brown Nicholson Terrace apartments.

His rugged road to recovery has been littered with relapse and disappointment, and while White says he's been sober "a good little while," he is loath to declare victory over substance abuse.

"I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic -- it's never over with," White said recently in his living room, reflecting on a lifelong struggle. "The only thing is I'm not active any more."

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Overview: Cocaine abuse has a long, deeply rooted history in U.S. drug culture, both urban and rural. It is an intense, euphorigenic drug with strong addictive potential. With the advent of the higher purity free-base form of cocaine ("crack"), and its easy availability on the street, cocaine continues to burden both law enforcement and health care systems in the United States.

COCAINE'S HIGH: The intensity and duration of cocaine's effects -- which include increased energy, reduced fatigue, and mental alertness - -- depend on the route of drug administration. The faster cocaine is absorbed into the bloodstream and delivered to the brain, the more intense the high. Injecting or smoking cocaine produces a quicker, stronger high than snorting. On the other hand, faster absorption usually means shorter duration of action: the high from snorting cocaine may last 15 to 30 minutes, but the high from smoking may last only 5 to 10 minutes. In order to sustain the high, a cocaine abuser has to administer the drug again. For this reason, cocaine is sometimes abused in binges -- taken repeatedly within a relatively short period of time, at increasingly higher doses. Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse

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Georgia College students might think twice now before they puff, puff and pass. The student body received an email on Sept. 6 from university officials notifying it of new measures in place for dealing with marijuana on campus due to the increased number of violations. Scott Beckner, police chief of Public Safety, says that the officers of Public Safety have responded to the increase in marijuana usage with a "proactive police response."

We are gathering better information from sources around campus, which allows our officers to intercept and confront marijuana violators on a more regular basis, thus creating more marijuana charges this year than in the past," Beckner said.

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Students at Linn State Technical College were met with a new and unnecessary drug testing policy on Sept 7. The tests will be included in student fees at a cost of $50 and will test for 11 drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Even if it is a technical college, using a drug test to determine whether someone should be able to attend school is creating a barrier to education that has nothing to do with a person's ability to excel in a particular career specialization.

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A Georgia judge who pointed a gun at himself while at the courthouse, berated his boss in a bizarre televised rant and acknowledged smoking mariajuana was ousted from the bench for life by the Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday. The court said Catoosa County Magistrate Anthony Peters has done 'nothing to show that he has any ability to live up to the high standard of conduct expected of members of the judiciary.' He could not be reached. His attorney previously blamed his behavior on prescription drug abuse after a devastating ATV accident in 2005.

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Zack Elliott was slumped in the back seat of his grandfather's car when children from "The Bluff" found him.

The 21-year-old drove from his Newnan home into the notorious haven for heroin in northwest Atlanta before dawn May 1 looking for a fix. Some time during the night, he pulled over on a side street to shoot up. Quietly and alone, he succumbed to his vice one last time and died of an overdose.

Elliott fits a profile the U.S. Department of Justice found during a 2010 analysis of Atlanta's drug market: More young Caucasians are traveling from suburban counties into the city to buy heroin. They buy a gram for about $160 and return home to abuse the drug and sell the leftovers, the analysis says.

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