MISSOULA - A man charged in the fatal overdose of a Missoula woman was sentenced Monday to 11 years in prison, the U.S. attorney's office said in a news release.

Eric Jacobson, 25, of Missoula pleaded guilty in January to distribution of a controlled substance causing death.

Jessica Lawhorn died in March 2005 after she and a friend split one pill of the painkiller Oxycontin that they had bought from Jacobson.

Adrienne Lecoure told investigators that she and Lawhorn, 19, drank a bottle of wine earlier that evening. After talking, the two women fell asleep, and Lecoure found Lawhorn unconscious the next day, court records said. Lawhorn was later pronounced dead in a hospital. In addition to prison time, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy sentenced Jacobson to 10 years on supervised release.

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At age 19, Steve's teeth were already chipping and falling out. By the time he landed in the Shelby prison, he had the blood pressure of a 78-year-old man. He'll take Prilosec to ease stomach pains for the rest of his life.

"I was in the meth explosion," the 26-year-old said. "We didn't know what it would do to you back then."

A hit of methamphetamine puts battery acid, farm fertilizer and Drano into a user's body. What the billboards show -- tooth decay and skin sores -- doesn't touch on what meth does to your insides.

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Thanks for recognizing Wisconsin congressman David Obey for sticking up for medical marijuana patients in a recent debate in your column, "Here's how Democrats can win in November" (July 20).

Unfortunately, according to the roll call, there are only 18 Republicans who, as you noted of Rep. Obey, speak like true Republicans on this issue. It was interesting to hear one of them, amendment cosponsor Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a former aide to President Reagan, share how not only did fellow Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger's daughter utilize cannabis fighting the cancer that eventually took her life, but that Nofziger himself used it to help manage his final illness.

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I'm writing about David Crisp's: "Here's how Democrats can win in November" (July 20).

It seems to me that Democrats should make a major issue of the federal medical marijuana ban. Polls show that the vast majority of voters favor the legalization of marijuana for medical use.

The Hinchey-Rohrabacher Bill would have prevented the Department of Justice from using tax dollars to prosecute medical-marijuana patients in states where medical marijuana is legal.

The bill failed because only 18 Republican from the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill. It seems like a major inconsistency for so-called conservative Republicans to say that they oppose "nanny state" policies, yet support our drug criminalization policies.

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In a speech in Billings in April, New York Times columnist David Brooks said that Republicans are on a "suicide watch" and had all but conceded that they would lose control of the U.S. House this year.

"I think they know they've strayed," he said, "and they're going to pay for it."

But the consensus among Democrats, he said, was that they couldn't believe they would win. And there does seem to be a certain fatalism among Democrats. Even with an unpopular president, an increasingly unpopular war, rising gasoline prices and an economy that has left middle-income wages stagnant, a common sentiment among Democrats appears to be: How will we blow it this time?

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A miniscule percentage of America's population of 300 million lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina, so therefore it's not really a national problem.

Forest fires don't happen in New York City, so the federal government shouldn't be terribly concerned about them.

That is the kind of faulty reasoning used in a conclusion of a report released earlier this month by the Sentencing Project, an organization that promotes alternatives to prison.

The report stated that national scope of methamphetamine abuse has been exaggerated by the media and government officials.

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Last week's Question of the Week asked whether police should have to announce themselves before bursting into a person's home. A large majority said they should. The question stems from a recent U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 ruling that police don't have to knock, a decision that rolled back earlier rulings protective of homeowners.

Among 586 votes in this unscientific poll, 485 readers said police should be required to announce themselves, while 101 said they shouldn't have to.

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HELENA -- Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath is taking exception to a report by The Sentencing Project, which said the prevalence of methamphetamine use in the United States has been overstated. "I think these people have their heads in the sand," McGrath said Thursday.

The Sentencing Project is a Washington, D.C.-based not-for-profit group that supports alternatives to prison terms for convicted drug users and other criminals.

The report, issued Wednesday, cited statistics compiled by the government in 2004 that show 0.2 percent of people had used meth in the past month, compared with 0.8 percent who said they had used cocaine within the past month.

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HELENA -- Some 85 percent of the inmates in the Montana women's prison are there, at least in part, because of methamphetamine. At a Missoula drug treatment center, 90 percent of the women who enter the program are dealing with a meth problem and nationwide, 50,000 people under the age of 21 have died from substance abuse since Sept. 2001, officials report.

Montana needs to do something about these statistics, Gov. Judy Martz said Wednesday during a conference on the state's methamphetamine problem.

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Montana's Not Immune From Drug Problems

From the gaunt cheeks to the oozing needle tracks on their arms, former Los Angeles police officer Ron Clem knew the faces of methamphetamine addicts when he saw them.

And the fact he couldn't erase those images from his mind after retiring from the police force played a pivotal role in his decision to move his family to the Kalispell area in a bid to shield his children from the war on drugs in which he battled for so many years.

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MISSOULA -- A former Montana State Prison guard was sentenced Friday to three years and one month in prison for trying to smuggle marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine into the prison. District Judge Donald Molloy also ordered Michael Short, 50, of Anaconda, to forfeit $4,500 in cash, his pickup truck and two guns.

Short pleaded guilty to attempted possession with intent to distribute marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine, and to being a drug user in possession of a firearm.

Prosecutors said they learned from a confidential informant that Short had been smuggling contraband, such as tobacco, into the prison and that he intended to start smuggling illegal drugs into the facility.

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The owner of a now-defunct Missoula pipe shop was sentenced Friday in U.S District Court for distribution of drug paraphernalia.

David Sil, 61, will spend the next two years on probation, including a six-month stint of home confinement.

In March, a Missoula jury convicted Sil on the federal charge following a two-day trial.

But Sil's penalty could have been much worse.

Based on federal sentencing guidelines, he might have spent one full year in a federal penitentiary.

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Amanda Dunnington has six teeth left.

Not long ago, the 25-year-old was homeless, sleeping in basements with spiders and digging in garbage bins food. Her son and daughter were taken away from her. Bruises from plunging needles into her legs and chest covered her body.

Methamphetamine does that to people.

"If I would have had any idea ... I never would have dreamed of doing it," she said. "It gets to the point where you think you have to have it to stay alive. You feel like you're dying."

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A $4.5m Campaign Has Certainly Raised Awareness, but Critics Say The Hysteria Is Ill-Judged

Travelling through the big sky country of Montana in the north-western US it is hard to believe that anything could be awry. Piebald ponies graze in their pastures, deer munch grass by the side of the road, and people are few and far between. But a series of billboards are disfiguring the views of the Rockies.

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Across the Mountains and Prairies of America, a Generation of Young People Is Falling Victim to Methamphetamine Addiction and State Authorities Are Struggling to Cope.

Even when she was stealing money from her nine-year-old niece to fund her habit Sarah Bright was certain she did not have a problem with methamphetamine. When she got up in the middle of the night and paranoically wandered around her garden, convinced that FBI agents were stalking her, she thought she was in control. She did not have a problem with drugs, she told herself. Everything was cool.

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A Missoula Group Proposes New Police Priorities

Marijuana offenses by adults could become Missoula County law enforcement's lowest priority if a recently filed ballot proposal proves successful.

Should voters approve, the initiative crafted by Citizens for Responsible Crime Policy (CRCP) would direct Missoula County officials--including the Sheriff's Department and County Attorney's Office--to put marijuana-related investigations, citations, arrests, seizures and prosecutions at the bottom of their to-do list, in favor of investing more time and resources into more serious crimes. Nothing about marijuana's criminal status would be changed, and the initiative wouldn't preclude marijuana arrests; rather, the measure would simply direct law enforcement to prioritize other crimes like robbery, murder, rape, assault and drunken driving. Marijuana offenses involving minors, driving under the influence or distribution near schools would not be de-prioritized.

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WASHINGTON -- Federal officials and tribal leaders testified at a congressional hearing Wednesday that the methamphetamine problem in Indian country urgently requires increased funding for prevention and treatment programs and more law enforcement coordination.

"The situation can be described in a single word: crisis," said Robert McSwain, deputy director of the federal Indian Health Service, at the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing.

Methamphetamine has contributed to the high rate of violent crime in Indian country, devastated native families and strained resources of tribal law enforcement, health and social services programs, said Matthew Mead, the U.S. attorney for the District of Wyoming.

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The first meeting of Peace for Patients, the state's first medical marijuana support and advocacy group, brought together a handful of patients and would-be patients in Missoula on March 27 in hopes that they might help each other navigate the murky waters of Montana's medical marijuana program, which voters approved in 2004, and now has 189 enrolled patients.

Daniel Skaggs, the Montana organizer for Americans for Safe Access and creator of the group, says he wants to build a network to provide patients with information and encouragement. Creating a public front of local support on the part of non-patients, particularly in the face of continued federal raids on patients, is also a goal, he says.

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Prisons are one of the fastest-growing sectors of Montana government. The Department of Corrections continues to be overwhelmed by increases in the number of convicts flooding the system, particularly those who must be incarcerated because they have failed in repeated attempts at probation and parole.

With the DOC asking for an additional, unbudgeted $11.5 million just to maintain operations through June 30, Montanans are again reminded of the vicious cycle of building more cells and directing more state resources toward lawbreakers. The immediate budget crisis prompted the DOC to postpone plans to build a prison of 256 beds that was supposed to include space for 60 inmates with serious mental illnesses and 100 beds for inmates with other serious health problems. The prisons of Montana hold more people with mental illnesses than the state's psychiatric hospitals.

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HELENA -- The state Department of Corrections needs an extra $11.5 million to make it until July and has temporarily scrapped plans to build a special needs prison for lack of funds, officials announced Thursday.

Corrections Director Bill Slaughter asked the interim Legislative Finance Committee Thursday for permission to spend the money out of the agency's pool of funds set aside for next year. He also asked the lawmakers whether they had any ideas on how the department might cut down on costs -- a delicate task in an agency that cannot scrimp on staff at lock-down institutions.

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