Some South Carolina lawmakers said Thursday that unemployed residents should lose jobless benefits if they don't show up for a drug test offered by a prospective employer.

Legislation under debate by senators also would strip any of South Carolina's thousands of unemployed residents of benefits for failing a drug test. Its advocates said job seekers who refuse or miss tests - even while on a different job interview - should lose benefits.

"A lot of time we'll offer a job, but when we tell them where to go do drug testing, they never show up because they know they're going to fail it," said state Sen. Ray Cleary, a Murrells Inlet Republican.

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The League of Women Voters of the Charleston Area thanks The Post and Courier and Thomas Ravenel for bringing public attention to the important issue of widespread illegal drug use. We think the public needs a fact-based understanding about drug use and related government policy, including an unbiased consideration about whether the criminalization of drug use has made the problem better or worse.

Recently our Charleston Area League members decided to educate ourselves on these matters. Before the League of Women Voters adopts a position on an issue, we are required to investigate all sides of the issue with an open mind. Therefore, in 2010 we did a year-long study on illegal drugs in South Carolina.

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After some "shouting" following Thomas Ravenel's op-ed article last month, the talk about illegal drugs seems to have subsided. I think this is unfortunate because the issue isn't going away, and I think it is clear to almost any observer that the current policy, costing us hundreds of millions, no billions, of dollars each year isn't working. In addition to the damage it is causing here, it is damaging our relationships with many countries, but most importantly, it isn't working.

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Charleston County is expanding its drug rehabilitation efforts to include a special court for veterans.

Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson on Monday announced the creation of a Veterans Treatment Court, where vets who end up in the criminal justice system can receive targeted attention to move them away from the addiction that got them arrested.

The strategy, which has been used in other parts of the country, is being done in conjunction with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Crisis Ministries.

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I understand that Thomas Ravenel wants any kind of drug to be available to one and all, and to be legal. But his breakdown of the number of deaths from the various drugs used is not the whole picture.

Some young men have cocaine delivered to their door by personal drug dealers, but thousands do not. These are the outcasts of society whose only thought is how, when, where do I get my next fix? There is nothing they won't do to stop this craving. They lie, steal, murder. Lose a wife, family, job, home, friends. Nothing is as important as cocaine and that next high.

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Bravo, Thomas Ravenel.

I agree 100 percent.

Gwen Tims

Terns Nest Road

Charleston

[end]

Thomas Ravenel might be the wrong spokesman for legalizing drugs; I believe he is. But he does make some good points. The problem with legalizing drugs, though, is the impact it would have on the socio-economic fabric of our state.

Drug criminalization keeps lawyers and judges employed. Prison systems provide jobs in South Carolina, including hard hit rural areas. The trickle-down economic benefits are the life-blood of many communities. Branding drug users as felons keeps them from competing with the rest of us for jobs and educational scholarships.

Do we really want to divert funding away from such a well-oiled system as the Drug War "industrial complex"? For what possible use?

Betsy Grund

Wesson Avenue

Charleston

[end]

I want to clarify my position on drugs. Schuyler Kropf asked me if I thought cocaine and marijuana should be legal and I said yes, but that would never be my policy initiative nor was it the object of my op-ed. As I told Schuyler, my position was to repeal prohibition as it was done in 1933.

In 1933, the repeal of alcohol prohibition didn't legalize the sale of alcohol at the federal level.

It simply turned it over to the states.

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Thomas Ravenel's Feb. 5 commentary regarding legalizing drugs gives me grave concern. Legalization could severely impact the socio-economic fabric of our state. He asks, 'Has all that incarcerating (of drug users) helped?'

Yes! The Drug War 'industrial complex' is thriving.

South Carolina law enforcement agencies, criminal courts and prison systems are expanding. As a defense attorney, I fear legalization could reduce the number of employed prosecutors, public defenders and judges who handle drug cases. Judges and lawyers would come off government payrolls. I say, let's keep them in state and federal courts.

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You brand Thomas Ravenel as 'playing the victim.' Then you add to his victimization by denigrating him as a drug law reformer.

Yes, he is a victim of both your editorial and the drug laws. When he broke the existing law, he knew he was running the risk of paying the consequences however unjust. So did anti-abolitionists when liquor drinking was illegal. So did freedom fighters when racial discrimination was legal. So do prostitutes who have no other way to make a living.

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I can't believe The Post and Courier would use the old shoot-the-messenger defense in its editorial criticizing Thomas Ravenel's column in favor of legalizing drugs. That is, if you can't attack the argument, attack the person making the argument which is what you did.

While you admitted he offered some persuasive points, you replied only that he's the wrong spokesman.

When he decried drug prohibition as "a violation of our civil rights," you answered that "he sounds as if he's playing the victim."

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In the many years I have spent as a law enforcement officer, I don't recall ever consciously using the term "Drug War" as my appellation for the societal problem of substance abuse. I may have used the term as a quote, giving in to the reality that it is so widely misused that if I stopped to discuss the term, I would deviate from the main point of my discussion.

I do not know the genesis of the use of the term, but I feel certain it was a misguided law enforcement official trying to "sell" some law enforcement program, or a politician. Thomas Ravenel's siren song of legalization or de-criminalization of drugs prompts me to address that issue. His is an old song with merely a new verse, or is it simply a re-arranging of the lyrics by a new singer?

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Former state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel is back in the news, this time on the op-ed page as he writes in favor of the legalization of cocaine and marijuana. Readers might recall (unless they've been under a big old rock) that Ravenel spent 10 months in federal prison on a cocaine conspiracy charge and is still on probation for three years. (His defense at the time was that he was not buying cocaine to distribute but rather to "gift" his friends at parties at his home.)

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Ex-S.C. Treasurer Says Prohibition Is Destructive, Costly and Futile Strategy

Former S.C. Treasurer Thomas Ravenel is breaking his silence and taking on America's drug war, saying he advocates a repeal of the prohibition on drugs and calling the government's response a failure.

"Drug abuse is a medical, health care and spiritual problem, not a problem to be solved within a criminal justice model," he said.

Prohibition is "our government's most destructive policy since slavery," he also said.

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William F. Buckley, conservative icon, warned 16 years ago: "The War on Drugs is lost." Since then, increasing numbers of Americans across a wide ideological range have raised practical and constitutional objections to the flawed law-enforcement approach to the problem of illegal drugs.

So it's hardly a surprise to see a man elected to statewide office in South Carolina as a self-billed conservative Republican in 2006 joining the chorus against the drug war.

But while Thomas Ravenel offers some persuasive -- and some not so persuasive -- points on that issue in a column on today's Commentary page, he's the wrong spokesman for this particular cause. That's not because of the arguments he put in his column.

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No matter how bad you might think illegal drugs are, drug prohibition (the War on Drugs) makes it infinitely worse. We must, again, repeal prohibition, not for drug users but for all Americans who are forced to endure the violence, street crime, erosion of civil liberties, corruption and social and economic decay caused by prohibition.

Drug abuse is a medical, health care and spiritual problem, not a problem to be solved within a criminal justice model. What historical precedent is there to recommend our current prohibitionist policy? Isn't history abundantly clear about such foolishness?

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8 opt for job help over prosecution: New program aimed at curbing drug trade

Eight suspects caught up in the North Charleston drug trade have signed up for a second-chance program in which they will be steered toward job training in lieu of being prosecuted.

As long as they stay clean, the drug charges they potentially face won't be pursued, a key provision of an experimental reform program launched this month.

The men, all between ages 18 and 30, were snared as part of a six-month undercover investigation of the crack cocaine trade around the drug-plagued Charleston Farms neighborhood.

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Critics Say Law Gives Officers Too Much Power, Profit Motive

Thousands of dollars that help Greenville County sheriff's deputies pay for their dog team and aircraft maintenance are the fruits of what critics say are state laws making it too easy for authorities to seize alleged drug money.

The Sheriff's Office spent $107,870 in forfeited drug money last year, much of it on its K-9 team, two helicopters and a Cessna airplane, according to records obtained by The Greenville News through the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act.

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COLUMBIA -- A state senator hopes to bar ex-convicts from serving on school boards, following the controversy over Edgefield County school board hopeful Nathaniel Jackson, who served three years in federal prison in the 1980s.

Jackson, who was released in 1991 after serving his drug-trafficking sentence, says people should be able to get on with their lives and participate in their communities like everyone else.

"My belief is that once you've done your time, served your probation and all that, you should have the opportunity to proceed with your life," Jackson said Tuesday. "This situation happened 25 years ago. Why should I be ineligible to run, or anybody, really?"

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Thanks for publishing the outstanding letter from the directors of Columbia NORML (Sound Off, "We Love Pot; You Should Too," Dec. 22).

I'd like to add that I've been buying beer and wine for more than 30 years. Yet, I've never been offered a free sample of whiskey, gin, vodka or any other hard liquor. However, when I was a marijuana user, which was more than 15 years ago, I was frequently offered free samples of much more dangerous drugs such as cocaine and meth by my marijuana suppliers.

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