The views expressed in the article "Marijuana Design Attracts Sales, Flak" truly revealed the phobic beliefs many people have with concern to marijuana use today. Two issues of concern were the fears expressed regarding both the message of a marijuana leaf and the patrons who choose to purchase such a product.

First, I fail to see either how viewing a marijuana leaf can cause otherwise sober individuals to become drug users. The choice to use marijuana is and always has been one for the individual to decide and is by no means influenced by a simple leaf. Furthermore, the association between marijuana and the growing methamphetamine use/production problem in Montana is preposterous. The only reason that marijuana users sometimes decide to move on to harder drugs is because of the exposure that accompanies the black market, exposure to harder drugs that are also illegal.

[continues 116 words]

CHEYENNE - Rep. Elaine Harvey is having a bill drafted to make it clear that a new Wyoming law protecting children from methamphetamine also applies to an unborn child.

Last week, a state district judge in Lander dismissed a child endangerment case against a woman whose newborn child tested positive for methamphetamine because the state law did not specifically say it applied to fetuses.

Harvey, R-Lovell, was the chief sponsor of the 2004 felony child endangerment law the defendant, Michele Ann Foust, 31, was charged under.

[continues 504 words]

But More Work Is Needed, Attorney General Tells Summit

Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath brought plenty of bad news about the state's methamphetamine problem to Thursday's Butte-Silver Bow Meth Summit in the Butte Civic Center annex.

"It's easy to make, easy to market and difficult to treat," McGrath told several hundred concerned citizens. Meth consumes a huge proportion of the state's police, correctional and health resources, he added.

Yet, McGrath also noted the progress Montana is making against meth. That progress starts with communities, like Butte, acknowledging the problem.

[continues 553 words]

Knowing there's no time to spin their wheels, the members of Cascade County Meth Free on Monday outlined the next steps in their assault on the highly addictive stimulant.

Earlier this month, the group organized an educational forum that drew 500 people who wanted to learn more about methamphetamine to the Great Falls Civic Center.

Terry Youngworth, fair housing specialist with the City of Great Falls, said the forum just emphasized the need to get basic information out.

"A lot of people want to know what is meth? Why is the community so worried about it?" he said.

[continues 478 words]

Editor's note: Carrie and her family, who have lived in the Bighorn Basin for nearly 30 years, wanted to speak candidly about her illness, but did not want to deal with the social repercussions in small-town Wyoming. Her name has been changed to protect their privacy.

CODY - Carrie's emotions were like mismatched puzzle pieces - they didn't fit the world around her.

She laughed in the wrong places. "Normal" responses eluded her. By the time she was 12, Carrie and her mother knew she was different from other kids. But when the diagnosis came back "rapid-cycling bipolar," Carrie bucked.

[continues 703 words]

A correctional facility to keep women out of prison is planned for Billings, the Department of Corrections director said Thursday.

"This is an individualized program designed to divert those sentenced to the department to other options," Bill Slaughter said.

The Billings Assessment and Sanctions Center, with 30 beds, will be designed to keep inmates out of the main prison and reduce the cost of dealing with increasing numbers of convicts. It also will provide services aimed at preventing prisoners from returning to the main prison facility.

[continues 616 words]

A Missoula social worker and drug prevention expert has been named executive director of the statewide Montana Meth Project - a $5.6 million anti-drug campaign that aims to quash teen addiction.

Peg Shea will assume the new position at the beginning of October, leaving her 12-year post as executive director of Western Montana Addiction Services in Missoula.

"My commitment in taking this position is to focus all of my professional resources and experience toward one goal - prevention," Shea said.

[continues 630 words]

BC's Prince Of Pot Faces Extradition

While 4,000 people gathered in Caras Park Sept. 10 to support industrial hemp at Missoula's Hempfest, worldwide Smoke Out America protests calling for an end to the U.S. drug war drew thousands more. One protest, at the U.S. Consulate in Vancouver, British Columbia, had special urgency and a special guest. Marc Emery, aka "the Prince of Pot" who founded the British Columbia Marijuana Party [BCMP] as well as Cannabis Culture magazine and Internet-based Pot TV, showed up to rally for his own cause.

[continues 901 words]

How can Montana confront the widespread destruction unleashed by methamphetamines?

Thomas Siebel has a bold plan.

More than that, he has the entrepreneurial spirit and resources to put that plan into action.

Widely known in business circles as founder of Siebel Systems, a leading global computer software company, Siebel also is a part-time resident of Montana.

Spending time here, he became aware of the state's increasing problems associated with meth.

As he pondered how he could help, he reflected on the American Cancer Society's successful campaign to de-glamorize cigarette smoking.

[continues 384 words]

A statewide anti-methamphetamine campaign was unveiled Wednesday, launching a series of shocking, graphic radio and television spots that directly target Montana teens.

The Montana Meth Project has one mantra - "Not Even Once" - which centers on the drug's addictive power. According to research, a person can become addicted to meth after using it to get high just one time.

The $5.6-million effort to quash teen addiction has garnered wide support from state officials, who gathered at the Missoula County Public Schools Administration Building on Wednesday. The Montana Meth Project is set to run for two years and will be the largest scale and longest-running campaign of its kind in history, said Tom Siebel, the campaign's chairman.

[continues 380 words]

A little before 5 a.m. on Friday, May 6, a couple of hours after shooting up what she thought would be her last dose of methamphetamine, Karen Hilleary prepared to kill herself.

She drove her '88 Olds Toronado up 27th Street toward the airport, then onto Airport Road, heading east. She turned off Airport Road to the undeveloped parkland on top of the Rims, then drove slowly toward the edge of the sandstone cliffs overlooking Billings.

It was beautiful, she said, looking at all the lights. She backed up a little to get a good run, put the Olds in gear and gunned it. Flying toward the lights, knowing she was going to die, was a bigger rush than meth ever was, she said.

[continues 1968 words]

While many of Helena's high-profile violent crimes 15 years ago had their roots in domestic violence, methamphetamine seems to have replaced it as, if not an impetus, at least a prevailing undercurrent.

While the details of last month's beating death of local librarian Amy Marie Rolfe are still emerging, it appears her alleged killer had, by his own admission, been using methamphetamine in the days preceding the young woman's death.

Lewis and Clark County Attorney Leo Gallagher doesn't want area residents to discount the effects of other forms of chemical dependency on violence in our community, but he's quick to add that methamphetamine has its tentacles woven into the majority of cases he sees.

[continues 1579 words]

A Billings pharmacist and former member of the Montana Board of Pharmacy pleaded not guilty Monday in District Court to 15 felony counts of fraudulently obtaining dangerous drugs.

John Herbert Poush, 40, also pleaded not guilty at arraignment to three counts of felony criminal possession of dangerous drugs. Poush was allowed to remain free until trial on a $30,000 bond.

Prosecutors said in court records that Poush was working last year as a pharmacist at Target when he wrote prescriptions for Hydrocan cough syrup for fictitious people and took the drugs home.

Investigators searched Poush's house on Palisades Park Drive and found "hundreds of controlled pills," including hydrocodone, alprazolam and diazepam, court papers said.

In 1997, Poush was appointed to serve a five-year term on the Montana State Board of Pharmacy.

[end]

Parental Drug Addiction Devastates Children

An estimated 6 million U.S. children live with at least one parent who abused alcohol or other drugs in 2001, the Annie Casey Foundation noted in its annual Kids Count Data Book. A study of children in a welfare program showed that children, especially adolescents, with drug-abusing parents had more behavioral, emotional and physical problems than their peers in drug-free families. Likewise, children whose parents abused drugs were more likely themselves to engage in risky behaviors.

[continues 343 words]

Two young women told a federal jury Tuesday how they helped run a conspiracy that brought high-quality methamphetamine to Billings from Washington state.

Gwen Black, of Washington, who seemed mature beyond her 19 years, calmly and directly testified how, when she was 17, she and her then-31-year-old boyfriend, Edwin Santiago, picked up shipments of meth from Martin Garcia in Mount Vernon, Wash., brought it to Billings for resale and sent back thousands of dollars in cash.

Black had pleaded guilty earlier to a related charge.

[continues 860 words]

HELENA - The state prison system is full again, and private groups in Great Falls and Lewistown hope to provide a relief valve in the coming months.

State Corrections Director Bill Slaughter also has told Gov. Brian Schweitzer that Montana inmates may be sent to out-of-state prisons this fall, to relieve overcrowding that's backed up into county jails.

"We've had to put beds in some of the 'day rooms' at the prison, which is the last possible option you'd want to do," said Joe Williams, head of the Correction Department's Centralized Services Division. "There is just nothing left in the system."

[continues 587 words]

Methamphetamine floods the brain with 10 times the pleasure of sex and 20 times the pleasure of food.

It's no wonder so many people who try the drug become addicted.

"There is nothing we can equate through natural phenomena or we can give through chemical phenomena that gives this rush," said Thomas Freese, a researcher with the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs in Los Angeles, during a presentation for medical staff at Deaconess Billings Clinic on Friday.

[end]

Officials Ponder Out-Of-State Transfers

HELENA -- State Corrections officials are considering shipping some Montana inmates to out-of-state prisons this fall due to a methamphetamine-fueled spike in felons sentenced to hard time.

In a letter to Gov. Brian Schweitzer last week, Corrections Director Bill Slaughter said the state's prisons are overcrowding and backing up into county jails.

"Our adult offender population is exceeding the emergency bed capacity of our" state prisons, the July 26 letter reads.

The state is housing 257 inmates in county jails because there is no room either at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge or at the state's only private prison, Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby. Counties, meanwhile, are sitting on roughly 3,750 outstanding felony warrants they cannot serve because they have no place to house the felons if they catch them.

[continues 649 words]

A Gardiner woman previously convicted of encouraging her 18-month-old daughter to smoke marijuana was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison.

A federal judge in U.S. District Court in Billings also handed 24-year-old Jessica Lynne Durham four years probation. The ruling came almost eight months after she was found guilty of distributing marijuana to a person under the age of 18.

That ruling, reached by U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull, was a result of a one-day trial before the judge, who heard the case without a jury. At the time, Cebull told the Associated Press, "I haven't seen a case like this."

[continues 88 words]

HELENA -- The group behind Montana's medical marijuana law wants the state to investigate why a commander of the nation's war on drugs didn't disclose the cost of his tax-funded Montana trip last year when he campaigned against the ballot measure.

The Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project filed a complaint in Helena District Court Thursday. The suit asked District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock to force the state's commissioner of political practices to investigate why Scott Burns, deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, didn't make public the cost of his trip to Montana last October.

[continues 470 words]