Misdemeanor Arrests For Marijuana Might Sink Low On The List For The Eureka Springs Police.

EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. -- Here in the heart of the Bible Belt, where local laws often restrict the sale of liquor, grass-roots campaigns to decriminalize marijuana have gone nowhere. But to the surprise of pot enthusiasts across the state, residents in the small tourist town of Eureka Springs will vote next month on whether to make misdemeanor marijuana arrests the city's lowest law enforcement priority.

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BENTONVILLE -- You are the meth solution.

That's the simple message members of the Benton County Methamphetamine Task Force and Drug Free Rogers-Lowell want to spread as they recognize October as Methamphetamine Awareness Month.

" This is a terrible problem in our community, and we have to do something about it, " Bentonville Police Chief James Allen said Tuesday. " It's a community problem, and it will take the community to solve it. "

Allen and Congressman John Boozman, R-Ark., were the two speakers during Monday's kickoff ceremony to focus on methamphetamine abuse during the month.

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BERRYVILLE - A countywide initiative to abolish the jail tax failed to make it to the November election ballot but three Eureka Springs issues did.

They included: an initiative to abolish the two-cent City Advertising nd Promotion Commission tax; continuation of a Parks and Recreation tax; and a marijuana initiative aimed at making adult misdemeanor possession the lowest law enforcement priority.

The jail tax initiative to abolish the half-cent tax failed to make it tothe November ballot because the petition was 409 signatures shy of the mark.

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Eureka Springs

A Fayetteville pro-marijuana group has collected enough signatures for a November ballot initiative seeking to make marijuana arrests in Eureka Springs a low law enforcement priority.

Fayetteville NORML collected the required number of signatures to put the question to Eureka Springs voters during the Nov. 7 general election, said Ryan Denham, the group's president.

The Carroll County Election Commission approved the ballot measure Monday, election coordinator Cathy Ellis said.

The initiative seeks to make arrests and prosecution of misdemeanor marijuana possession of 1 ounce or less a low priority, Denham said.

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Members of the Fourth Judicial District Drug Task Force are warning parents about the dangers their teens could face at rave parties.

" It's basically a place where everyone gets together and listens to techno music while waving light sticks around, " said Sgt. Doug Pope, of the Fayetteville Police Department. " The drug of choice associated with raves is typically ecstasy, psilocybin mushrooms, acid and marijuana. "

Last week, Fayetteville police joined with the Washington County Sheriff's Office to make several arrests at a rave east of Fayetteville on Hog Ridge Hollow.

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Members of Project Right Choice on Thursday discussed an upcoming methamphetamine awareness presentation aimed at school staff.

The meeting, which is set for 9 a. m. on Sept. 14, will be held at the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Co-op in Farmington. The program will highlight the effects of methamphetamine abuse, how it's produced and what it looks like. Also discussed will be meth labs and the quantity that's imported. The meeting will target nurses, counselors, resource officers and teachers.

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Clemency For Meth Manufacturer Sends Wrong Message

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has decided to grant executive clemency to Larry Sadler, a Little River County man who is serving 15 years for making methamphetamine.

Sadler, 58, was arrested in December 2000 after eluding authorities since a raid on his house in June of that year.

Authorities say Sadler ran a lab capable of producing 20 pounds of meth, a fairly good-sized operation.

Now, after serving a few years of his sentence, Sadler wants out. And apparently the state parole board and the governor are, for some reason, willing to go along.

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County law enforcement officials across 44 states recently reported methamphetamine as the No. 1 drug problem in their county, according to a survey released last Tuesday by the National Association of Counties (NACo).

Almost half of the counties surveyed reported meth has caused more problems than cocaine, marijuana, and heroin combined.

But despite proposals from the Bush administration to eliminate the grant that funds drug task forces around the country, local and national public officials have proved they are willing to take a stand.

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Methamphetamine use has hit rural communities the hardest, and those also are areas where treatment programs are most limited, experts told Congress on Wednesday.

A common, but untrue, myth is that meth users can't overcome their addictions, said Richard Rawson, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Rawson said his UCLA clinic treats people addicted to alcohol, cocaine, heroin and meth. Meth users have similar success rates.

But those addicts who most need help can't get to it, said Leah Heaston, a director of treatment centers in rural Indiana, told the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources.

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The Pangburn School District board voted in their May meeting to begin drug testing in grades seven through 12.

Students who are found to be using drugs will not be allowed to participate in extra curricular activities. Superintendent Rick Wood said Friday the policy will begin with the 2006-2007 school year this fall.

"We don't think we have a problem with drugs, but in White County it's growing, so we thought we'd be proactive," Wood said.

Riverview School District has an almost identical policy, Wood said.

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Now that Rush Limbaugh has managed to keep himself out of prison, the punishment he once advocated for drug abusers, let me suggest a new cause for him: speaking out for people who can handle their OxyContin.

Like Limbaugh, Richard Paey suffers from back pain, which in his case is so severe that he's confined to a wheelchair. Also like Limbaugh, he was accused of illegally obtaining large quantities of painkillers. Although there was no evidence that either man sold drugs illegally, the authorities in Florida zealously pursued each of them for years.

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Groups Out To Change Federal Law

In the past five years, almost 1,900 students or prospective students at Arkansas colleges and universities have been denied federal student aid because they admitted to a drug conviction, according to recently released data from the U.S. Department of Education. Arkansas had the eighthhighest rate -- 0.27 percent -- of post-secondary students denied aid among all states, the data show. Nationally, nearly 190,000 students, or about 1 per 400, lost out on funding because of a provision to the Higher Education Act signed into law by President Clinton. Most federal student aid is awarded through Pell Grants, which contribute up to $3,125 per year to an undergraduate, according to the Education Department. The release of a state-bystate breakdown in late April has added steam to the effort of student groups, educators and legislators -- including U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark. -- to repeal the law. On March 22, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based group that "educates on the harm caused by the war on drugs," filed a class-action lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union against the Education Department, calling for aid to be given to students who were denied it because of drug convictions. There are three plaintiffs so far, none from Arkansas. Snyder is co-sponsoring a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to repeal the provision. "Here's the problem: These are people who are being candid about their past," Snyder said of denied students. "They've been accepted into school.

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Are your kids more distant than they used to be? Do they seem tired all the time and moody, yet when asked if something is wrong, insist they're okay and storm off? If so, they may be dealing with more than just growing pains. They could be abusing drugs.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 50 percent of students will have tried an illicit drug by the time they finish high school. Statistics show that in 2005, 6.9 percent of 8th graders, 11.4 percent of 10th graders and 13.9 percent of 12th graders had used sedatives, tranquilizers or narcotic drugs other than heroin in the past 12 months.

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Arkansas Ranks High In Penalizing Drug-Offender Students

But Snyder Wants To End The Penalty

Arkansas ranks eighth among the states in the percentage of college applicants who are denied federal financial aid because they've been convicted of drug offenses. Congressman Vic Snyder, a Democrat, is a co-sponsor of legislation to end the aid penalty.

A group called Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), headquartered in Washington, said last week that 1,858 Arkansans had been denied federal college aid because of drug convictions since the penalty was enacted as part of the Higher Education Act of 2000. That's .27 percent of federal-aid applicants. Nationwide, nearly 200,000 would-be students have been denied, a percentage of .25. Indiana had the highest percentage of denials among the states, .50.

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The River Valley Methamphetamine Project of Pope County was one of three community projects honored Monday at the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock for its efforts in combating the drug epidemic.

Nine local members of the meth project received awards in the governor's conference room "due to the ongoing front-line work that our community is doing in combating the meth problem," according to Marti Wilkerson, RVMP lead facilitator.

The local meth project -- designed in 2004 to curb meth use, manufacturing, and distribution -- is comprised of local law enforcement officials, court personnel, drug treatment and rehabilitation services, schools administrators, business/industry managers, child protective services, Realtors, and the media.

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Through a joint effort of the River Valley Meth Project and two Arkansas Tech University sociology classes, Pope and surrounding counties are expected to soon know more about the meth epidemic sweeping the state and the nation.

Within in next several months, the two Tech classes will be conducting research, developing surveys, collecting data and writing reports on the effects of methamphetamine in the Arkansas River Valley.

"We want to alert the community that a survey related to substance abuse in Pope County will be coming out, and we would like a response to it to better understand this problem," said Marti Wilkerson, lead facilitator for the River Valley Meth Project (RVMP) and associate professor of Rehabilitation Science at Tech.

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Dear Editor,

The persistent county jail problems should be no surprise. What do you expect when an intolerant majority makes criminals out of substantial parts of the populace?

I am speaking of course, about the unjust and outright racist marijuana laws of the state of Arkansas. These laws make simple possession of the leafs of an herb a contraband crime punishable by 1-10 years, depending on priors. Although few are in county jail for this type crime, there must be thousands in state prisons, taking up space and causing the local backlogs.

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WEST FORK -- Members of a group seeking to legalize the medical use of marijuana by people suffering the severe, chronic pain of cancer or other diseases will soon be making some phone calls all around the state and, in the process, moving toward a decision to be made by the group this year, said Denele Campbell, executive director of Arkansans for Reform of Drug Policy in Arkansas, as well as executive director of the Arkansas Alliance for Medical Marijuana. "We're in the process of making telephone calls to hundreds of supporters across the state to see if we can get a commitment from people to contact their legislators. If people are not going to contact their legislators and ask them to support a bill, then we're not going to push for a bill. It can't come from us. It has to come from the people. The primary objective is to see if they're willing to contact their elected representatives in the state of Arkansas and federally. You know, the federal government could save us all a whole lot of trouble and take some action on this issue," Campbell said. "We are in the process of doing that. It's probably going to take us a couple of months, with our team of volunteers, to make all these phone calls, but that's what we're working on. What we're asking people is, No. 1, will you call your legislators? And then, No. 2, will people work in teams in your part of the state to turn out other people and generate phone calls (to lawmakers)?" she said.

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An average of one newborn a week has been placed in state custody because of a new state law that requires medical staff members to report mothers suspected of using illegal drugs.

Before the law's passage, the state's child-abuse hot line did not accept reports of newborns affected by illegal drugs as abuse or neglect, leaving physicians frustrated by the prospect of sending a newborn home with a drug-abusing mother, said Sen. Tim Wooldridge, DParagould, who sponsored the legislation, Act 1176 of 2005.

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Oxycontin Is Not the Problem, He Says. 'The DEA Is the Problem.'

FORT SMITH - This is Dr. Robert Kale discussing the drug problem in America:

"The drug problem has gotten worse since the inception of the DEA [federal Drug Enforcement Administration]. The pressure they put on caused an increase in price. When that happened, a whole bunch of entrepreneurs got in the business, just like Prohibition. Drugs hadn't been rampant in the schools before the DEA. In the '60s, amphetamines were widely available, but they weren't used recreationally. They were used to lose weight. Truck drivers used them to stay awake. [So did college students cramming for tests.]

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