Target Big Cartels; Step Up Treatment

When Iowa's two U.S. senators - Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Tom Harkin - this spring called on President Bush to fire his drug czar, John Walters, they spoke for many people frustrated with the lack of success in the war on drugs. But Walters' performance is mixed, and firing bureaucrats won't make our failed drug policies work any better. Systematic change is needed.

Despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars and arresting millions of Americans, illegal drugs remain cheap, potent and widely available in every community. Meanwhile, the harms associated with drug abuse - addiction, overdose, the spread of AIDS/HIV and hepatitis - continue to mount. Add to this record of failure the collateral damage of the war on drugs - broken families, racial disparities, wasted tax dollars and the erosion of civil liberties - and it's easy to see why so many Americans want major change.

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Perhaps this has happened to you: You are relaxing at home, nursing an adult beverage after a hard day at work.

A grade-schooler wanders into the room. The grade-schooler notices you are kicking back with an adult beverage. He suddenly becomes a hostile substance-abuse counselor.

The grade-schooler has completed his CARE, DARE or SCARE program. Maybe he has even read a pledge or an essay aloud to the class.

He is a new convert, a true believer who is convinced that street drugs, tobacco and alcohol are weapons of mass destruction.

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Erich O. Newton was sentenced to 25 years in prison Monday on federal drug charges stemming from the death of his girlfriend in 2004.

Newton, 31, of North Liberty pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to distribute cocaine resulting in death and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking.

Newton's girlfriend, Sara Palumbo, died Jan. 14, 2004, at Mercy Hospital shortly after a man dropped her off there. Police said Palumbo was unconscious when she arrived at the hospital. She died from a cocaine overdose, investigators said.

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Taxpayer-Funded Rock In Prevention's Pat McManus Received Compensation For Making Cds, Plus A Salary

A controversial, publicly financed Des Moines charity routed $315,732 to its executive director last year - an amount that represents almost 39 percent of the agency's total spending.

The money was paid after state lawmakers agreed to directly finance Rock In Prevention Inc. with $600,000 in Iowa taxpayers' money. The Legislature's action enabled the charity to bypass the normal, grant-application process through which private organizations typically must compete for public money.

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A decision in the Charter Amendments case has been filed at the courthouse by Judge Thomas. This decision is in favor of the plaintiffs and against Iowa City. If the city appeals the decision, the argument will go all the way to the state Supreme Court for final determination.

However, if the city does not appeal, then the City Council is obligated by the decision to place on the ballot the three proposed amendments to the City Charter that were petitioned by over 1,600 qualified voters of Iowa City.

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The Register's June 27 editorial regarding Dallas County seizures has one good point ("Dallas Seizures Call for Stronger Oversight").

If there are not statewide procedures for all law-enforcement jurisdictions to use in these situations, at least some guidelines for officer conduct and confiscation are needed.

However, I strongly disagree with the content and insinuations in the rest of the editorial. The subheading, "Law Officers Shouldn't Profit From Crime," is an allegation that, in fact, they are doing so. The citizens and taxpayers of Dallas County are the profiteers. The editorial suggests more oversight.

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Shift Means Aging Inmates Will Require More Medical Care

Rockwell City, Ia. -- The baby boomer generation is making its mark again, this time inside Iowa's prison system.

The number of Iowa convicts age 51 and older has increased more than sixfold over the past 20 years and will undoubtedly continue to grow in the coming decades, a researcher told the Iowa Board of Corrections on Friday.

Iowa had 686 inmates ages 51-plus last year, representing 8 percent of the state's overall prison population of 8,578 offenders. That compares with 105 convicts, or 4 percent, in the same age category in 1985.

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Heroin deaths, which had risen sharply in eastern Iowa in recent years, are down because of a multi-agency police task force, law enforcement officers said today.

Further, a dangerous combination of heroin and fentanyl, called "Drop Dead," has not yet appeared in eastern Iowa, drug officers said during a news conference in Cedar Rapids.

"Most of the heroin trade comes out of gangs from Chicago," said Rick LaMere, a federal Drug Enforcement Agency agent. "We have not seen fentanyl yet."

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CEDAR RAPIDS -- A purer and more potent form of heroin is spreading across eastern Iowa and leaving a trail of bodies in its path, said state and federal officials.

The resurgence of the opiate is to blame for six deaths in Linn County in the last 19 months, and 25 deaths across Iowa's eastern half in the last five years, U.S. Attorney Charles Larson said Thursday.

Arrests and convictions are up as well, as more than 20 cases have been filed in the federal Northern District court in Iowa since August, Larson said.

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Legality Of Amendments At Issue

A recent district court ruling allowing Iowa City petitioners to put city government changes up for a public vote now is being opposed by the city.

Filed June 21, the ruling aids a 2001 petition effort to make amendments to the city's Home Rule Charter.

The amendments include subjecting the city manager and police chief to retention votes every four years; increasing powers of the Police Citizen's Review Board; and mandating changes in police practices and procedures, including allowing police to issue citations, rather than arrests, for non-violent, misdemeanor offenses such as "personal use amounts of marijuana."

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There Have Been No Fatalities Tied To The Drug In The Past Five Months

Cedar Rapids, Ia. -- Heroin deaths, which had skyrocketed in eastern Iowa in recent years, are down because of a multi-agency police task force, law enforcement officers said Thursday.

Heroin overdoses caused the deaths of 25 people in eastern Iowa in the last five years, U.S. Attorney Charles Larson Sr. said at a news conference in Cedar Rapids. There have been no heroin deaths in eastern Iowa in the last five months, a decline he attributed to a task force formed in August.

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Iowa's drug czar and the author of a new study on methamphetamine use nationally hope Iowans and policy-makers don't misunderstand new findings on the rates of meth abuse.

The study released this month by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., said rates of meth abuse have been stable nationally since 1999 and have dropped significantly among teenagers. It also says meth's portrayal as an epidemic nationally has been exaggerated, and cites 2004 government statistics showing fewer than 1 percent of Americans had used the highly addictive drug in the past month, or roughly 583,000 people.

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Oversight Scarce in Dallas County's Interstate Seizures of $1.75 Million

Jesus Quinonez-Jimenez's first encounter with the Dallas County sheriff's department was bathed in flashing red lights as he drove along Interstate Highway 80 in March. His last came a short time later, after he denied ownership of the Illinois-registered 2000 Audi and more than $781,000 was found wrapped in plastic and hidden in secret compartments behind the car's rear wheels.

Quinonez, who gave deputies a California address, was allowed to leave - without the cash; without the car.

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I'd planned to visit Ray Lakers in the Polk County Jail. But when it was time to make arrangements, he was already gone.

The place was overbooked, so they shipped him to Bethany, Mo., an hour and a half away.

A week later they slipped the shackles on Lakers again, put him in a van, shipped him back to Des Moines and let him loose.

Not that Bethany isn't a wonderful place. It's just a long way to go to pay your debt to society for a crime that isn't against the law in at least a dozen other states.

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A Mexican citizen is facing life in prison for his role in a methamphetamine deal in Waterloo.

Andres Hernandez-Carrillo, 34, who was living in Waterloo, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of pure methamphetamine in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids.

Sentencing will be set at a later date, but Hernandez-Carrillo will have to serve a minimum of 10 years without parole -- and could face life in prison and a fine of as much as $4 million.

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A federal judge ruled yesterday that Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries and the state of Iowa violated the Constitution by setting up a government-funded program to rehabilitate prison inmates by immersing them in Christianity.

The case, brought by the Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has been widely viewed as a major challenge to President Bush's faith-based initiative, the White House's effort to deliver more government funding to religious groups that provide social services, particularly in prisons.

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InnerChange Freedom Initiative Will Continue At The Correctional Center In Newton During An Appeal

A faith-based Iowa prison treatment program in which inmates immerse themselves in evangelical Christianity is unconstitutional and must be shut down, a federal judge said Friday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of Des Moines, in a 140-page ruling with national implications, said the Innerchange Freedom Initiative at the Newton Correctional Facility violates the First Amendment's clause barring government from the establishment of religion.

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The United States of America is under the impression that we can control the entire world or at least North America. Mexico's Presidente Vicente Fox was set to sign a bill decriminalizing the personal use and possession of illegal drugs. The U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, Judith Bryan, says that the U.S. doesn't want American tourists to go to Mexico to use illegal drugs.

Mexico was about to make an important step in the war on drugs. They were about to face the true facts of this unjust and unnecessary war: that by prohibiting the use of anything you create more crime than you reduce. Just look the prohibition of alcohol.

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Brian Gilbert has been under investigation since March, when some of the money seized during a traffic stop disappeared.

Dallas County Sheriff Brian Gilbert stood in front of four dozen friends and co-workers Friday and announced plans to resume his duties, despite a criminal investigation into a packet of money missing from a March 15 traffic stop.

"We're at a point where I am ready to return to work," said Gilbert, who has been on a self-imposed vacation since the state investigation began. "I have sworn to uphold a duty ... and it's time that I got back to work to do that."

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Mitchellville, Ia. -- A couple of years ago, Laurie Reyes was in trouble.

Her drug addiction had taken hold of her life. She started forging checks. The Marshalltown woman was caught, ending up at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville.

Now, with two weeks left in her yearlong prison stint, the 33-year-old is starting to look for companies willing to hire felons. She yearns for a job with good benefits for her and her four daughters.

At a prison job fair on Friday, Reyes' fears about re-entering society were eased a bit after talking with Firestone about a job that would pay $13.64 an hour.

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