Okay, teachers. It's your turn. The back-to-school pop quiz is not just for kids today. Here are six multiple-choice questions. Answer them correctly, and you'll also be able to answer the one question that boggled the best minds on the D.C. Council this summer: What is a "high-quality" education -- and how do you get one free?

Question One: In July, the D.C. Council considered placing on the November ballot a referendum on giving public school students the legal right to a "free, high-quality" education -- "with the term high-quality to be defined by local law enacted by the Council of the District of Columbia." But the idea was scrubbed because:

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WASHINGTON - Sadly, America's first national prison commission in 30 years failed to tackle, head-on, our lock 'em up culture and to find ways to reduce the number of people behind bars in Virginia and elsewhere.

The commission's recent report is little more than a how-to manual to help wardens cope with overcrowded prisons that breed violence, disease and recidivism. What we really need is a road map to drastically shrink Virginia's prison population and, at the same time, save state taxpayers a lot of money.

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There was a time when the nation's crime rate was front-page news. In the 1990s, the crime rate began to drop and we worried less. But a preliminary report released by the FBI in June shows an increase in robberies and violent crime in 2005. Inasmuch as drug abuse can facilitate criminal behavior, this is a good time to take a closer look at how the science in substance abuse has started to provide some answers on how to solve these problems.

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It's been 25 years since we first learned of a disease that was killing a handful of white, gay men in a few of our nation's largest cities -- a disease that later became known as AIDS. But lulled by media images that portrayed AIDS mainly as a white, gay disease, we looked the other way: Those people weren't our people. AIDS was not our problem. It had not entered our house.

We had our own problems to deal with, so we let those people deal with their problem. But that was a quarter-century ago, and a lot has changed. Now, in 2006, almost 40 million people worldwide have HIV, and 25 million are dead. And most of those who have died and are dying are black. That's not just because of the devastation the pandemic has wreaked upon Africa.

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DeForest Rathbone rightly laments the thousands of deaths caused each year by drug abuse but wrongly asserts that legalizing drugs "would drive that horrific statistic much higher" ("Don't legalize dope," Letters, Monday). On the contrary, it's the current system of prohibition that keeps this statistic inhumanely high. If drugs were legalized, addicts would more readily seek treatment. Also, suppliers would be under competitive and legal pressures not only to ensure the quality of their products, but to standardize information about dosages.

Furthermore, sellers would lose incentives to push drugs to schoolchildren. Anyone who doubts this claim should ask himself when he last saw Anheuser-Busch or Seagram's peddling their intoxicating wares on schoolyards.

Donald J. Boudreaux

Chairman Department of Economics

George Mason University

Fairfax

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service folks can forget about online gambling or learning about cultivating weed or watching porn at work. There's a new computer filter that will "block inappropriate use of the Internet," acting deputy director Kenneth B. Stansell writes in a recent memo.

Yes, indeed, it's time to focus on fish and furry creatures. "What types of websites will be blocked?" the memo asks. Plenty of your favorites, is the answer. Sites with "nude or semi-nude human forms" or ones "that describe sexual acts or activity," as well as those focused on "sex-oriented businesses such as clubs, nightclubs and escort services."

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CHICAGO -- What I saw here on a recent summer weekend was a sight I never imagined. I am not referring to two-year-old Millennium Park, the stunning mixture of greenery and architecture that has been built over the old railroad yards east of Michigan Avenue. I am talking about another of Mayor Richard M. Daley's legacies, the mixed-income townhouse and apartment developments south and west of the Loop that have replaced those 16-story monuments to drugs, despair and degradation that were the landmarks of Chicago's public housing for 50 years.

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Terry Michael's column ("Legalize drugs," Op-Ed, July 24) and three letters to the editor on Thursday all titled "Legalize drugs" try to make the point that the nation would be better off if it just legalized drugs. But that idea is dangerous and preposterous given the evidence we have today of the influence that mind-altering and addictive substances have in destroying children, families, schools and communities.

Currently, drugs directly cause about 3,000 overdose deaths each month, according to the latest estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is the equivalent of the deaths on September 11 occurring every month year in and year out. Legalizing drugs would drive that horrific statistic much higher.

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Although they supposedly speak English in England, they have different names for certain things. When they say "lift," they mean "elevator." "Lorry" is their word for "truck." And to them a "businessman" is what we call a "racketeer."

David Carruthers, former chief executive officer of Bet-OnSports, discovered the significance of that difference during a recent layover at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, where he was arrested for helping Americans bet on sports. His arrest is part of a larger attempt by the U.S. government to impose its brand of repressive paternalism on countries with more tolerant policies.

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Terry Michael suggests many reasons to question America's so-called war on drugs and its peculiar obsession with marijuana, but one seems particularly obvious: It hasn't worked, most obviously in the case of marijuana.

The Justice Department's Drug Threat Assessment 2006 reports, "Marijuana availability is high and stable or increasing slightly" despite an all-time record number of marijuana arrests -- 771,984 in 2004. Eighty-nine percent of those arrests were for possession -- more arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined.

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Thank you for publishing Terry Michael's outstanding Op-Ed column, "Legalize drugs" (Monday). When we legalized alcohol in 1933 after Prohibition, we didn't surrender to the alcohol cartels - we put them out of business.

When we legalize, regulate, tax and control our now-unregulated, untaxed and uncontrolled drugs, our overall crime rate will decline substantially. The drug dealers, drug lords and drug cartels will be put out of business overnight, and our robust prison-building industry will come to a screeching halt.

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Terry Michael did a good job listing the societal harms caused by the drug war in "Legalize drugs," but he forgot to mention that the drug war simply doesn't work. Creating a punitive nanny state has not resulted in lower rates of drug use. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United States than in any European country, yet America is one of the few Western countries that punishes people who prefer marijuana to martinis.

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An open letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch: stop reefer madness here, as well as in Dubai.

Mr. Hatch, you have demonstrated willingness to act beyond ideology, when a practical approach makes more sense than "conservative" or "liberal" purity.

You did so recently, for an American victim of draconian drug penalties of the United Arab Emirates. This is an appeal for your leadership to stop the equally devastating American "War on Drugs."

Many officials admit behind closed doors that our drug policy needs radical revision. Few will say so publicly. This "third rail" of politics is exacerbated by the collusion of mainstream media, suspending usual rules of journalistic practice, publishing government propaganda without quoting critics of drug-war policy.

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Mother Of Deceased Maryland Star Speaks At Basketball Camp

Don and Maryjo Vanwingerden haven't had a son on the verge of NBA stardom, but they are able to relate to the pain Lonise Bias spoke of Thursday night at Dan Lawray's Basketball Camp at Benton Middle School.

In June 1986, Lonise Bias's son Len, arguably the greatest basketball player in University of Maryland basketball history, died of a cocaine overdose two days after being selected No. 2 in the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics. Four years later, Lonise lost a second son, Jay, who was shot to death.

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I appreciated The Post's coverage of the 20th anniversary of the death of college basketball great Len Bias, particularly Michael Wilbon's June 19 Sports column ["The Story of Bias's Death Should Always Have Life"].

I worked at NBC News at the time of the University of Maryland basketball star's death. A few years later, I decided to produce a segment with correspondent Bill Schechner for "Sunday Today" on Len's mom, Lonise Bias. Bill and I spent some time taping Lonise as she spoke to students, prisoners and teens about the dangers of drugs.

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Most of the people who sneak across the border are no longer good people in search of honest work, the sheriff of a border county in Texas told a House subcommittee yesterday, but rather criminals who belong to gangs and drug cartels.

"For years we have seen individuals enter the country illegally," said Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., sheriff of Zapata County. "However, recently we feel that many of these persons are no longer entering the country to look for legitimate employment. We are now seeing that many of these persons are members of ruthless and violent gangs."

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Rush Limbaugh's detention by border control officials for possession of Viagra without a prescription in his name has crossed over into the absurd [The Reliable Source, June 27].

Tens of millions of Americans take pharmaceutical drugs, sometimes many of them. Some people like to put all their medications in one container or a pillbox, or to keep the original prescription container at home so it doesn't get lost. When the amount is small enough to indicate it is almost certainly for personal use, it seems ludicrous for Customs officials or anyone else to hassle people about it.

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When Len Bias, the basketball star, overdosed on cocaine 20 years ago, Len Bias, the symbol, was born. To many he symbolized the corruption of college athletics -- stars whose academic performance is poor, if not irrelevant, but who are essential to bringing in donations and other revenue. To others, he became the object lesson: Cocaine is dangerous, don't do it, you can die. For yet others, Bias symbolizes the danger that arises when a powerful symbol overwhelms careful judgment about what ought to be the law.

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On the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark decision allowing the federal government to overrule state medical-marijuana laws, a new lobbying group is trying to persuade some of the House's most conservative members to protect the terminally ill's right to use the drug.

Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a nonprofit group funded by patients, doctors and researchers who support exploring marijuana's therapeutic potential, opened its Washington office last month and completed its first grassroots lobbying visits yesterday.

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The frantic 911 call from a University of Maryland dormitory came in at 6:32 a.m. June 19, 1986. A 22-year-old campus hero -- the finest basketball player in the Terrapins' history, just two days earlier the second player chosen in the NBA draft -- was sprawled on the floor between two narrow beds, unconscious, without a pulse.

"It's Len Bias. . . . He's not breathing right," one of his closest friends, a Maryland dropout named Brian Tribble, told the dispatcher in a shaky voice. "You've got to bring him back to life."

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