Colleges Need To Take Stronger Steps To Curb The Abuse Of Substances On Campus, Report Says

A report on college student alcohol and drug abuse released Thursday calls on administrators to take a stronger stance against drinking and drug use on campuses.

The report, "Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America's Colleges," lays out a 10-point plan of action administrators can follow to prevent and reduce student substance abuse.

The report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, at Columbia University, says excessive drinking in college is not a rite of passage but rather a culture that has been allowed on many campuses.

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While downtown Columbia was in commotion Saturday over a rally by an extremist political group, MU played host to a more peaceful gathering for two groups representing a different side of the political spectrum.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Students for Sensible Drug Policy, both of which are national drug law reform groups, held their annual conference for Missouri last weekend at the Arts and Science Building.

NORML is a non-profit lobby group that advocates for the legalization of marijuana for medicinal and recreational use.

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St. Robert police have a problem, but it's not necessarily a bad problem: too many schools like Officer Crystal Nunn, who was asked to begin a Drug Abuse Resistance Education program at Freedom Elementary School and now handles several other programs at schools on Fort Leonard Wood.

Nunn had worked as a police officer in St. Robert before she left for a suburban St. Louis police agency where she received training as a DARE officer. When she returned to the St. Robert Police Department last year, city officials decided it would be good to use her DARE training to begin a program when the Waynesville R-VI School District opened a new elementary school in St. Robert.

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Students, Activists And Professionals Discuss How To Change Drug Laws.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Students for Sensible Drug Policy held their 2007 state conference at the MU Arts and Science building Friday and Saturday.

About 35 people attended to hear professionals and activists discuss how to change drug policies at the university, city and statewide level. The conference schedule included educational sessions on industrial and medical marijuana use, lobbying and strengthening student activism and social events like dinner at the Grand Cru restaurant.

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As a person who has diabetes and arthritis for which I am prescribed pain killers, an article in the Boston Globe this week peaked my interest. Written by Lester Grinspoon, a professor at Harvard Medical School, it's titled "Marijuana As Wonder Drug."

The article focused on a new study in the Journal of Neurology being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine saying, "It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine--and US drug policy--that we still need 'proof' of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years."

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Catherine L. Hanaway, federal prosecutor for Missouri's eastern district, spoke at a public meeting Wednesday about child endangerment and methamphetamine.

The meeting was held by the Jackson Chamber of Commerce and the Jackson Noon Optimist Club at Delmonico's restaurant in Jackson.

Thirty two people attended the presentation, including Jackson Chamber and Optimist members and representatives from Safe House for Women, New Vision Counseling, CASA and the SEMO-NASV, all of Cape Girardeau.

Jackson police Lt. Chris Mouser introduced Hanaway, saying the topics are important issues for communities today.

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Note: Colorado Springs (Colo.) Gazette Editorial

According to the old saying, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That seems to be the advice the Colombian government is getting these days. Colombia is once again asking for an infusion of U.S. cash, ostensibly to help in the drug war.

Under Plan Colombia, begun during the Clinton administration, the U.S. sent $4 billion in aid to that South American nation.

Now, Colombia is back in Washington, asking for another $4 billion for what's informally being called Plan Colombia II. This time, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos is linking the effort to a trade deal being brokered between the two nations.

Although we like the idea of freer trade between the two nations, we're wary of another infusion of cash to a drug war that's not working.

We don't believe Americans are getting their money's worth .

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In largely unheralded good news, the Bush administration has made great strides helping Colombia fight the double-barreled threat of a deadly insurgency and ultra-powerful drug lords. The bad news is that if we're not careful, these hard-fought gains could slip right through our fingers.

With progress in fighting drugs uneven in much of Latin America, Colombia has been a singular success story. With $4 billion in training and aid from the United States since 2000, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is successfully prosecuting a 20-year-old war on drugs, while also defeating a 40-year guerrilla insurgency.

Without sustained U.S. aid, Colombia won't be able to increase its security forces. It's not just about helping a friendly, democratically elected government fight drugs and an insurgency. It's about security in this hemisphere.

Peter Brookes

Heritage Foundation

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Editor, the Tribune: I'm writing about "Marijuana bust leads to arrests" in the Feb. 12 Tribune. The marijuana traffickers arrested will soon be replaced. They always are.

It seems to me that jails and prisons should be reserved for only those who intentionally harm others against their will.

Not gardeners. Not people who use, produce or sell "unapproved" substances to willing buyers.

In a marijuana transaction there are willing buyers and willing sellers. So why is the government involved?

For the sake of our children, we need our government to protect us from real criminals - not ourselves.

A free country's government cannot protect its adult citizens from themselves. A free country's government has no right attempting to do so.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

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My students are my heroes.

Working at an urban community college, many times the issues we hear from students are very different from the ones heard on the suburban campuses. The problems that our students struggle with on a daily basis are amazing and unbelievable. They are trying to attend college in the middle of a war. A war that is going on in our own city: a war on drugs, crime, education, poverty and guns. They are the people that we have already cut and run from.

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WASHINGTON -- If you're moving to a house or an apartment in Missouri, your new place is more likely to have been a former methamphetamine lab than in any other state, federal officials say.

That's no big deal if it has been properly cleaned up, which involves removing meth residue. But lack of information on potential dangers and cleanup led the House of Representatives on Wednesday to authorize funding of federal research on the aftermath of meth-making.

In Missouri no guidelines exist for the remediation of defunct labs, unlike in several other states. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said the issue has been overlooked for too long.

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Noel Reeves, who will be 34 later this month, did not finish high school. He had a hardscrabble childhood on the city's South Side.

He had a hardscrabble young adulthood, too. He had a number of failed relationships with women - two children resulted from those relationships - and a string of low-paying, temporary jobs. Three times he was busted on marijuana charges. It wasn't until last year that he got a job with benefits - health care, a retirement plan, all the accouterments of the middle class. By then, he also was married. Along with his mother, he and his wife bought a modest home in High Ridge.

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WEBB CITY, Mo. - The Webb City Police Department is pursuing authorization to join an area drug task force, Chief Carl Francis said. Francis has proposed that the department join the Jasper County Drug Task Force, a partnership that has been in place since 1986 among the Joplin and Carthage police departments, the Jasper County Sheriff's Department, the Jasper County prosecutor's office, and the Missouri State Highway Patrol. "Webb City officers would have access to the tools that are necessary in narcotics," Francis said. "Webb City has no officers as members of the drug task force, and we're not participating in any narcotics investigations. Of course (drug crimes) are happening within our city limits. It only makes sense that Webb City would participate in those investigations." Francis said membership would allow Webb City to benefit from money from the Missouri Department of Public Safety and the U.S. High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program. He said the HIDTA program affords $75,000 a year to the task force.

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Circuit Court Judge Julian Bush seems like a low-key fellow. He is a slight and studious-looking. He is an 11-year veteran of the bench. Last month, he sentenced Eddie Woodfin, a career criminal who had been convicted of possession of crack cocaine. Woodfin is a tall, husky fellow with long hair. He looks younger than his 48 years.

He has been in enough trouble that there is some dispute about how much trouble he's been in. One official in the court system told me Woodfin had eight felony convictions for stealing. His attorney said he had 16. At any rate, the Missouri Department of Corrections reports that Woodfin has done a couple of stretches in prison for stealing, and at the time of his sentencing, he was on probation in St. Louis County for stealing. Admittedly, stealing has a certain built-in momentum. If you're a neophyte, you have to steal $750 worth of something to qualify for a felony charge. But after two convictions, all subsequent cases count as felonies. Steal a pack of cigarettes? A felony.

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Marijuana and methamphetamine use among teenagers has declined in the past five years, but the rise in prescription drug use among teens is a growing concern.

According to a University of Michigan study, teen drug use has declined 23 percent since 2001, with reductions in the use of nearly every drug except the prescription drug OxyContin, which saw a 30 percent increase in use during the last year.

Local officials are concerned with the rising use of prescription drugs like Adderall and Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, said Dana Branson, assistant clinical supervisor at the Family Counseling Center in Cape Girardeau.

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The leaders of tomorrow at Hollister Middle School finished a program on Friday that will help ensure they make better choices in the future.

Hollister was able to hold its first Drug Abuse Resistance Program graduation Monday morning for its fifth- and sixth-grade classes.

Traditionally, the program is only taught to fifth-grade students, but because Hollister's sixth-graders did not get to participate in the program last year they were invited to do so this year.

"Last year, our fifth-graders got passed up," said Middle School Principal Mary Lou Combs. "So, when we set up for this year's fifth-graders, we set it up for the sixth-graders as well, so that no one would get passed up, because I believe this is one of the best drug prevention programs out there."

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WASHINGTON - The executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is warning of a looming health crisis because of the glut of cheap, highly pure Afghan heroin coming onto the market.

The U.N. official, Antonio Maria Costa, said the new supply of Afghan opium, from which heroin is derived, is outpacing demand by record levels. The result: widespread availability, lower prices and such high purity that the danger of overdoses is rising sharply.

Costa has recently delivered warnings to national health ministers, mayors and drug therapy agencies in major heroin markets such as Europe, Russia, Iran and North America. He said many have indicated they're already seeing the impact.

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Economist Milton Friedman, who died recently at age 94, will be missed. He won't be forgotten.

Friedman and British economist John Maynard Keynes were the twin pillars of 20th century economic thought.

Keynes -- responding to the excesses stemming from the armistice ending World War I, and the subsequent devastation of the Great Depression -- argued that government had a key role to play in managing devastating swings in unruly economies. His viewpoint held sway for the next four decades.

Friedman, beginning shortly after World War II and hitting a crescendo in the 1970s, countered that free markets served as the single most efficient way to allocate resources, effort and capital. Friedman argued that the smaller government was, the better, and that the Keynesian approach over time would inevitably lead to higher inflation and unemployment.

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Residents of Centralia got a chance to address some of their concerns about their community on Wednesday night.

A Town Hall meeting was held at Centralia High School to address the problems of drugs in the community, especially pertaining to kids according to the Mexico Ledger.

Local experts spoke at the meeting and addressed questions from the community. Jill Angell, freshman health teacher, Tom Fair, the school resource officer, Pete Schmersal, the drug court coordinator, and Kevin McBee, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict attended to weigh in on the issues.

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Citizens of Centralia got a chance to address some of their concerns about their community on Wednesday night. A Town Hall meeting was held at Centralia High School to address the problems of drugs in the community, especially pertaining to kids.

Local experts spoke at the meeting and addressed questions from the community. Jill Angel, freshman health teacher, Tom Fair, the school resource officer, Pete Schmersal, the drug court coordinator, and Kevin McBee, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict attended to weigh in on the issues.

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