Re: July 29 letter "Handbaskets and hard time."

The letter writer is against people who feel drug offenders should not be jailed because it's a victimless crime.

Take a look at our war on drugs and ask: Why is it that heroin addicts must spend several hundred dollars a day to support their habit? The inflated cost is due to our prohibition laws.

Who benefits? Drug cartels, law enforcement (big bureaucracies give them jobs and power) and the private prison industry.

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Musings at 37,000 feet (and back on the ground in Rhode Island):

Lines approaching security clearance were absurdly long at 5 a.m. Thursday. That's the day that the Transportation Security Administration at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport started checking passenger identification, a function previously performed by the airlines.

My wife, Cyndy, and I were in lines for well over an hour, boarding the plane mere minutes before it pushed back from the gate. The lengthy delays, we were told, were largely the result of too many passengers failing to segregate their gels and liquids into transparent plastic bags.

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DALLAS -- Federal drug officials here suspect increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border has led traffickers to turn to large-scale marijuana growing in North Texas and other places around the nation where major pot fields have been rare.

Authorities have busted three large pot groves in the Dallas area over the past month, including an 8-acre plot containing 10,600 plants, many more than 6 feet tall.

The busted weed was so heavy and bushy, agents used a twin-rotor Chinook helicopter to haul bundled loads of it out of the densely vegetated bottomlands where it was being cultivated.

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In a move that could threaten a pilot syringe exchange program for drug addicts in Bexar County, District Attorney Susan Reed has warned local officials that the legislation authorizing it doesn't trump the state's narcotics laws.

"I'm telling them, and I'm telling the police chief, I don't think they have any kind of criminal immunity," Reed said. "That's the bottom line. It has nothing to do with whether they do it or don't do it -- other than if you do it you might find yourself in jail."

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A Former Dallas Police Officer Says Her Partner Had No Right To Search A Car For Drugs

On an April evening in 2006, two police officers were patrolling a crime-ridden neighborhood in Northwest Dallas, a few miles south of Love Field. One cop was a respected veteran, the other a rookie less than a month out of the academy, now learning on the job. The two saw a BMW pull out of a dilapidated apartment complex where drugs are often peddled.

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John Walters, President Bush's "drug czar," is using the tragedy of young people dying from use of "cheese" heroine to promote his current favorite program: random, suspicionless drug testing of all students. (See Thursday news story "Drug czar praises testing by Texas school districts.")

Walters' grants will redirect $1.67 million in Department of Education funds to test kits, test administrators and laboratories. Students must miss class time to be tested. Schools risk being sued in case of error.

The largest study of student drug testing ever done -- 76,000 students -- was conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. It found no difference in illegal drug use between students in schools that test and those in schools that do not.

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DALLAS -- Fernando Cortez Sr. hopes that increased national awareness about "cheese" heroin will prevent other parents from experiencing the loss he did. His son, 15-year-old Fernando Cortez Jr., died March 31 after he took the drug -- a mixture of black tar heroin and crushed over-the-counter medicine such as Tylenol PM.

"These issues need to be addressed," Cortez said, "to help moms and dads so they don't go through what I went through."

John Walters, President Bush's "drug czar," was in Dallas on Wednesday to draw attention to the importance of random drug testing in schools and to award some grants.

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Federal Official Visits Area, Meets With Local Task Force

President Bush's drug czar praised Dallas leaders Wednesday for fighting "cheese" heroin use among youths - a move he said is vital to preventing its spread to other parts of the country.

"That's one of the reasons we're trying to watch this closely," John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said during a news conference Wednesday at Dallas Independent School District headquarters.

Mr. Walters spoke after receiving a briefing from the Cheese Heroin Task Force. DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins and some parents whose children died of cheese were among those who attended the briefing, which was closed to the public.

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White House Official Hopes To Keep Cheap Heroin From Spreading

WASHINGTON - President Bush's drug czar will get a front-line tour today of Dallas' battle with "cheese" heroin, a potentially lethal form of the drug often targeted at teenage users.

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, will meet with representatives of the regional task force of local law enforcement, public health and education officials to learn more about a drug that has been linked to 23 student deaths since January 2005. Although cheese, a mix of black tar heroin and over-the-counter cold or sleeping pills, does not seem to be in use much beyond Dallas, the drug czar wants to find out what the federal government can do to help keep it from spreading. "He will get hopefully a first-hand and in-depth report and brief on exactly what this phenomenon, what this issue is about," said Scott Burns, deputy director for state, local and Indian affairs for the drug policy office. "Over the past six months to a year, we continue to hear more and more about cheese." Cheese has raised concerns among many anti-drug advocates because it is cheap - sometimes as little as $2 per dose - and is sometimes used in the recruitment of gang members. Plus, it poses risks of addiction for children who may not know they're buying heroin because of the innocuous name. Debbie Meripolski, executive director of the Greater Dallas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, who has worked to arrange the briefing, said Mr. Walters will hear from her, Dallas police, educators and police from the Dallas Independent School District and a parent who has been involved in the area's efforts against cheese.

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Who's smoking what in Washington?

Re: July 10 commentary "In the nation's drug war, sanity goes up in smoke."

Kathleen Parker's column made sense to any of us who weren't born yesterday. The most commonly cited rationale by zealot prohibitionists for waging the war against marijuana users is that it has a host of adverse side effects. But if relative risk was the criteria for defining outlawed drugs, we'd first prosecute use of alcohol, tobacco and a bevy of pharmaceuticals.

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Re: "Colombian spraying hurts more than it helps," by Colleen Minter McCool, July 19.

I am a native Dallasite whose father and family are Colombian.

U.S. insistence on maintaining criminal prohibition laws against cocaine guarantees multibillion-dollar funding for the Colombian drug cartels, which use their profits to fund huge networks of criminal drug dealers across North America.

As Ms. McCool notes, dumping poisonous herbicides on Colombian farms not only fails to slow coca production, it does nothing to help reduce cocaine addiction and abuse among Americans.

It's time to disempower the drug cartels and end the unwinnable war on drugs, for the sake of Americans and Colombians alike.

Amy L. Saldarriaga, Plano

[end]

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Fed up with deadly drive-by shootings, incessant drug dealing and graffiti, cities nationwide are trying a different tactic to combat gangs: They're suing them.

Fort Worth and San Francisco are among the latest to file lawsuits against gang members, asking courts for injunctions barring them from hanging out together on street corners, in cars or anywhere else in certain areas.

The injunctions are aimed at disrupting gang activity before it can escalate. They also give police legal reasons to stop and question gang members, who often are found with drugs or weapons, authorities said. In some cases, they don't allow gang members to even talk to people passing in cars or to carry spray paint.

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EL PASO -- A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent was arrested Friday after being indicted on charges that she allowed more than a ton of marijuana to be smuggled into the United States, federal prosecutors said.

Margarita Crispin was arrested at a port of entry in downtown El Paso. She was indicted on a single count of conspiracy to import a controlled substance, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement.

Crispin is accused of allowing loads of marijuana through her port of entry lanes since June 2003. Prosecutors say she allowed at least 2,200 pounds of marijuana to be smuggled into the U.S.

Crispin was jailed Friday in El Paso and is scheduled to make an initial court appearance Monday. It is unclear if she has a lawyer.

[end]

In the Old West, outlaw gangs would sometimes try to sidestep the criminal justice system by busting someone out of jail. Today, that role is being taken up by some members of Congress.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing into the case of ex-Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. The two men were convicted last year of shooting and wounding Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, an unarmed drug smuggler, along the U.S.-Mexican border and then covering it up by destroying evidence and falsifying reports. Ramos and Compean were sentenced to 11 and 12 years respectively.

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Sidling through a crowded, narrow hallway at El Divino Salvador United Methodist Church on the near West Side, where dozens line up for groceries from the twice-monthly food bank, Bill Day smiles and asks, again and again: "Do you need any syringes?"

Most shake their heads or stare blankly. The few who say yes claim that they or family members are diabetic. Day believes at least some of the needles will be diverted for illegal drug use. And that's fine with him.

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One of the odder controversies swirling these days is the bitter criticism being flung at Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, which is based in San Antonio and includes Austin. Sutton's shortcoming, it appears, is his strict enforcement of the law even when the law-breakers are Border Patrol agents.

Sutton, appointed by President Bush, prosecuted the two agents for shooting at and wounding a fleeing but unarmed drug suspect and then lying about it in 2005.

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GRAND PRAIRIE -- As many as 50 law enforcement officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration and several Metroplex cities on Saturday were clearing a marijuana field near the intersection of Farm Road 1382 and Camp Wisdom Road near where the Grand Prairie and Dallas city limits meet.

The 5-to-7-acre field, on which more than 10,451 pot plants were interspersed, was discovered Friday. A caller tipped off the Grand Prairie Police Department on Friday afternoon. Dallas police then confirmed the find using their helicopter, and DEA officials were called in.

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The recent decision by the San Antonio Express-News to temporarily remove its border correspondent from its Laredo bureau was a judicious move. The paper temporarily withdrew reporter Mariano Castillo after a U.S. law enforcement source warned that an unspecified American journalist was on the hit list of a Mexican criminal group.

In the current context of rampant violence, the threat must be taken seriously.

Mexico's powerful drug cartels have repeatedly targeted Mexican journalists, fueling a culture of self-censorship particularly along the border. Despite a constitutional mandate to safeguard freedom of the press, Mexico's federal government has done little either to protect journalists or ensure the free circulation of information.

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Re: "Guns at the ready - Colombia's FARC a threat still worth fighting," Monday Editorials.

In 2000, the federal government created Plan Colombia that was supposed to halt the flow of heroin and cocaine to the U.S. - all in the teeth of that country's 38-year-old civil war.

The plan has cost about $5.4 billion. What did we get?

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, prices did not go up, purity remained high, availability did not diminish and the number of acres of coca being cultivated increased to 144,000.

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Up To $5 Million Worth Of Pot Planted On Utility Land Along Dallas-GP Border

Acting on a tipster's call to Grand Prairie police Friday, federal agents went looking for 200 to 300 marijuana plants amid dense thickets along the suburb's border with Dallas.

By Saturday morning, investigators had uncovered 10,451 marijuana plants worth up to $5 million - the biggest drug crop ever found in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

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