Students in Federal Way high schools, for the most part, don't mind the idea of having undercover police officers attending classes with them.

Two weeks ago, the Federal Way Police Department charged 12 students and two adults with drug and weapons charges after an undercover operation at three Federal Way high schools. The officers, a 29-year-old woman and a 33-year-old man, posed as students while purchasing drugs and guns.

Undercover operations in high schools are rare in the area. The most recent local undercover high school bust was in Redmond in 2003.

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"If you smoke marijuana and you run out, you're probably not going to go out and steal a car or rob someone. It's not going to be that important to you, but methamphetamine is different," Cpl. Dave Reagan of the Spokane County Sheriff's Office said on March 24, 2004, in an article on ABC.com.

Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Dianne Dougherty, however, seems intent on prosecuting 66-year-old medical marijuana patient Christine Baggett ("Surprise side effect," June 5). Even though the facts are clear that she wasn't "dealing drugs," she's being charged as if she was selling heroin to high-school kids. This is a clever way for the justice system to circumvent medical marijuana legislation, which specifically allows patients like Baggett to possess a certain amount of marijuana for personal medicinal use.

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Meet Christine Rose Baggett, a 66-year-old great-grandmother who was formally charged Monday as a drug dealer in a county with a backlog of narcotics cases.

Baggett, a widow with no criminal record, suffers from two kinds of arthritis, two herniated discs in her back and a broken ankle that hasn't healed properly, she and her attorney said.

Her sight is failing and she has a laundry list of other ailments for which she walks with a cane and uses marijuana for relief.

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Dear Editor of the Stranger: It is commendable and encouraging to read that students are working to end cannabis persecution, prohibition, and extermination ["High Minded," Dominic Holden, May 17]. Government is the Nazi of cannabis and someone needs to stop the holocaust. One reason to end the anti-Christian persecution of cannabis that doesn't get mentioned is because it's Biblically correct since Christ God Our Father (the Ecologician) indicates He created all the seed-bearing plants, saying they are all good, on literally the very first page. The only Biblical restriction placed on cannabis is that it is to be accepted with thankfulness (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5).

Stan White

Dillon, Colorado

[end]

Surprise was the first reaction students had at Federal Way's Todd Beamer High School after hearing that two police officers had walked among them as peers for seven months while building evidence for a drug and gun sales sting.

For many, the second reaction was relief.

Students of all grade levels said they appreciated having two Federal Way police officers -- a 28-year-old woman and a 33-year-old man -- taking action against what many perceived to be a serious drug problem in their school.

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It is obvious that the Hempfest organizers hate real art. Anything that is not tie-dyed, paisley, painted on black velvet, or a hand-held glass "sculpture" that holds bong water is not worthwhile art to them.

The Hempfest organizers cannot see through their marijuana-smoke-filled Volkswagen vans to see how th v is event is harming the Puget Sound environment. Sea lions, Orcas, endangered salmon runs, quack grass, and all other native vegetation that the Seattle Art Museum has gone to great expense to design, import, and strategically place is in imminent danger of being completely destroyed under the Birkenstocks of these eco-terrorists. Last year's "festival" did irreparable harm to rocks and logs that were torn from their natural habitat and relocated, just to make a wider entrance for more partygoers to overfill Myrtle Edwards Park.

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Hmm, the heavily endowed SAM doesn't want Hempfest anymore ["Stoners vs. Sculptures," May 16]. I think we can see where this is going. The fest will be relegated to Magnuson Park or to another city. And I'll miss it way more than the Sonics, because if people can't gather over something they care about, we're dead.

As for the sculpture "garden," I gain strength from recalling what became of other equally irritating eyesores. Richard Serra's Tilted Arc was shit-canned from Manhattan and sent to the breakers. It could happen again, right?

Kenmore

[end]

The entrance and exit into Myrtle Edwards Park from the south has been extremely reduced in width. Before construction began on the sculpture park, Hempfest representatives made it clear to the city and Seattle Art Museum that the roadway needed to be larger than SAM has constructed. The footage needed to safely execute a large political event such as Hempfest is much wider than SAM built. In the 10 years prior to SAM's construction, the roadway has allowed a safe event.

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The Program Works, But It's Short On Staff - And Money

EVERETT - She was an addict for 10 years.

Her drug of choice was methamphetamine, "and any other drug I could get a hold of," she said.

Child Protective Services put her two children in foster homes and Celina Forget (pronounced For-Jay) lived in her car or wherever she could find a place.

When she was arrested for drug possession and faced jail and a felony record, she decided to do something about her life.

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A look backward in time through the yellowing pages of newsprint archives shows what The Daily and the UW looked like 25 years ago this month.

Although Ram Dass, spiritual guru of the '60s, is now well into middle age, he hasn't lost any of the verve that cost him his Harvard professorship and cast him into the spotlight 20 years ago.

In the mid-'60s Dasss, along with Timothy Leary and others, took the drug culture beyond endless parties, free love and dropping out.

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One reader invited me to Hempfest; another called me a moron.

In Thursday's column, I wrote about a conversation I had with Larry Bobo, a leading expert on race and crime.

He's on a crusade to get people to rethink the war on drugs, which has driven the prison population to senseless levels and filled cells with black men in highly disproportionate numbers. Men come out of prison unrehabilitated and stigmatized. They can't get work, and most wind up back in custody.

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A plan to reopen a corrections facility near Arlington to free up space for state parole violators in the Snohomish County Jail was dropped Monday after officials could hire only one of the 35 officers needed to staff the new facility.

The decision comes three months after the Department of Corrections (DOC) faced severe criticism from state lawmakers and Gov. Christine Gregoire for releasing parole violators from county jails because of overcrowding. In February, the DOC released more than 80 inmates from two King County jails and the Snohomish County Jail because the agency had exceeded its allotted capacity at the facilities.

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Our response to drug abuse is a bad trip that makes a nasty problem worse and spreads the damage all over.

The crack we're addicted to is an over-reliance on police and prisons, which, among other things, perpetuates America's racial divide. Black Americans are disproportionately caught up in the drug war.

That helps keep alive negative stereotypes of black people and it nourishes a lack of faith in American justice on the part of black people.

Neither condition is good for a healthy democracy.

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A King County councilman and a former Seattle police chief are among those who will discuss the nation's drug war and how it is being fought locally at a community forum Thursday.

Organizers have made clear their position on the issue, calling the panel, "The Time is Now -- End the War on Drugs."

"This is not a debate. The war on drugs has failed," said Sunil Abraham, a Seattle defense lawyer and one of the seminar's organizers.

The meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. in the Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St.

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Sophomore Smokes Out UW's Hypocritical Drug Policy

With 65 percent approving, University of Washington students passed a referendum May 10 advising the school to equalize penalties for alcohol and pot. That's the first step in changing campus policy.

Currently, according to UW's official alcohol and drug-abuse statement, students are prohibited from using either substance on campus: "Violation of the University's alcohol and drug prohibitions is cause for disciplinary or other appropriate action."

However, according to Tim Kelly, the sophomore behind the pot vote (he's the president of UW's chapter of NORML/SSDP, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Students for Sensible Drug Policy), there's a disparity when it comes to enforcement. Residential advisers, who are like dorm moms, have repeatedly told Kelly they are allowed to simply pour a student's hooch down the drain. End of story (even for minors). But if marijuana is suspected, residential advisers are required to call the UW police--and then students face arrest, suspension, expulsion, or eviction from student housing.

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Hopefully the North Kitsap School District (Parents, schools take aim at drugs and alcohol, May 5) will avoid the most common reefer madness lies and mistakes which contribute to contempt for drug education and escalated hard drug addiction rates. Cannabis (marijuana) doesn't cause cancer since there are no dead bodies to show for it in over 5,000 years of documented use, while tobacco kills over 1,000 North Americans daily. Cannabis is less intoxicating than alcohol, less addictive than coffee and should be re-legalized. It's commendable helping youth resist alcohol, sex, drugs, coffee, driving and cannabis till they are older and responsible but caging responsible adults for using cannabis is the wrong way to do it.

Truthfully,

Stan White,

Dillon, Colo.

[end]

For those who have not yet voted in this year's ASUW election, one ballot question may come as a surprise.

Question on the ballot:

Do you agree that University of Washington policies for the use and possession of marijuana should be NO greater than those imposed for the use and possession of alcohol?

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws/Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (NORML/SSDP), which recently became a Registered Student Organization, has begun its campaign to educate students and faculty. Group members said they hope to spark campus dialogue regarding the use and possession of marijuana by asking students to answer a yes-or-no question before submitting their votes for the ASUW officers.

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OLYMPIA --- A lawyer challenging Wahkiakum School District's random drug testing of student athletes still hadn't finished making his first point when Supreme Court justices started firing questions at him Tuesday afternoon.

"How does this random drug testing work?" Chief Justice Gerry Alexander asked attorney Eric Martin, representing the American Civil Liberties Union.

What about requiring student athletes to take physical exams? Is that an invasion of privacy? Was Martin also opposed to drug testing athletes suspected of using illicit drugs?

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POULSBO - Despite the idealistic environment the North Kitsap area offers, it's not immune to the dangers of drug/alcohol use by some of its children.

In an attempt to help curb a problem hovering right beneath the surface, a drug and alcohol prevention information night for parents of North Kitsap School District students has been slated 6:30-8:30 p.m. May 9 in the North Kitsap Auditorium.

Information about the types of drugs kids use, effects on the "teen brain", what to do and how to get help will be provided.

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Where 420 came from and how people in the Palouse spending April 20.

It's pronounced "four-twenty." Not "four-two-zero," or "four-hundred twenty." The three-digit number isn't an area code or password. It represents a holiday that surpasses time zones for marijuana users all over the world.

Spencer*, a freshman agribusiness major, first celebrated 420 when he was 16 -- his sophomore year of high school. He said that ever since, it's been one of his favorite days.

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