An excellent expose by the Tribune shows that alerts by police drug-sniffing dogs in suburban Illinois are usually wrong, and that the hit rates for car searches resulting from the use of dogs are nearly twice as high for whites than for Hispanics ("Drug dogs often wrong; Police canines can fall short, but observers cite residue and poor training as factors," Page 1, Jan. 6).

These numbers do not tell the full story. Dog sniffs are menacing, especially for minority motorists, in light of historical abuses committed with police dogs. Dog sniffs also are humiliating, taking place in full view of passing motorists, friends and strangers alike, many of whom probably conclude that the people subjected to dog sniffs must be guilty of something. Full car searches based on false dog alerts are even more frightening and embarrassing.

[continues 437 words]

Over the past few weeks, several letters to the editor have expressed outrage at the thought of medical marijuana legislation being approved. While most have attempted to disguise their bad faith arguments as a defense of the medical industry and "good" or "proper" medicine, facts have a way of undermining that alleged sincerity.

First, in an attempt to defend doctors, the commenters routinely make the implicit suggestion that doctors are incapable of determining what medicine is appropriate for their patients. It is a profound display of bad faith to suggest that doctors don't know the dangers of carcinogens, or worse, that they will somehow abandon this knowledge if a new form of medicine is approved.

[continues 171 words]

As a coalition of parents and concerned members of our community, the Menard County School and Community Task Force would like to alert you to the "medical marijuana" legislation. SB 1381, medical cannabis, if passed will send the wrong message to our young people and endanger them.

Today, more teens are smoking marijuana than are smoking cigarettes, according to the 2010 Monitoring the Future Survey. The rise in use among eighth-, 10th- and 12-grade students corresponds to the favorable attitudes young people have toward the drug. More teens have the perception that marijuana is not harmful because they are being told it is a "medicine."

[continues 149 words]

I write in response to Catherine Coonrod, an evidently healthy lady who sees no need of passing a medical cannabis bill when all we have to do is wait for the Food and Drug Administration to act. Well, Catherine, we have been waiting since 1939 and still have no answers. How many more decades are we to wait?

Perhaps Catherine is unaware that the federal government has refused to allow these studies. Only recently has California begun serious study of the medical benefit of marijuana. They have found some amazing things - that marijuana is an excellent anti-cancer agent, for one. They also found that inhaled marijuana is the best method of controlling the pain of neuropathy.

[continues 172 words]

New Bill to Legalize the Drug Has Been Filed in the House

After enduring two rounds of back surgery and suffering nerve damage in his leg, Marshall Parks knows the rest of his life will be a battle against pain.

He's taken a laundry list of medications and treatments.

The one he said works the best is illegal.

He was rarely a political activist, but now he feels it's time to be an advocate for medical marijuana. Not just for himself, but for people he has watched suffer, including his late mother.

[continues 1691 words]

Mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel hopes that a nice round number of 1,000 more cops on the street will sell like presidential candidate Bill Clinton's 100,000 more cops sold.

As for me, I'd be happier if Rahm proposed to take 1,000 cops off drug-war duty by supporting drug policy reform ideas that take the profit out of the drug business. If he proposed and accomplished that, then there would be less turf-war crime, less addict crime, fewer shootings, fewer bullet holes, weaker gangs, fewer guns in drug-dealer hands, fewer crossfire innocent victims, less need for more police officers, fewer dollars going to the Cook County Jail and greater hope that Chicago, Cook County and Illinois might be able to pay the bills of government.

[continues 68 words]

Whether to call a substance "medicine" is not the role of the Illinois General Assembly - or any other legislature, for that matter. What in the world do our politicians really know about the efficacy of substances? Not much, I'm willing to bet. So, their current debates about whether to legalize "medical marijuana" amount to little more than political arrogance.

In this nation, we don't take popular votes to determine what is and is not medicine. And no hospital or reputable medical association - including the American Medical Association in Chicago and the American Academy of Pediatrics in Elk Grove Village - recommends that people smoke anything as a part of responsible medical treatment.

[continues 84 words]

It has come to my attention that, although legislation promoting smoking marijuana and calling it "medicine" was defeated in November 2010 and again last Thursday, it may be called for another vote very soon. Pot proponents never seem to take no for an answer.

There are more than 20,000 scientific studies on marijuana/cannabis and none of them have shown crude marijuana to be good for anything, certainly not medicine. To safely "prescribe" a medicine, the strength, purity, effectiveness, proper dose for a specific medical condition, and its interaction with other medications must be known. Common sense tells us that it is impossible to meet these safety requirements by smoking a substance.

[continues 157 words]

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. The Illinois House on Thursday narrowly voted down the authorization of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

The bill would have allowed people suffering from chronic pain or nausea caused by certain debilitating conditions to be prescribed a potent dose of cannabis to alleviate the symptoms. It fell four votes short of passage.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, pledged to continue pushing toward legalizing the illicit herb. "I am going to continue to press on - on this particular piece of legislation, or some version of it - until I pass it," Lang said. "Next year, the year after ... I'm a young man. I'll be here awhile."

[continues 119 words]

I read the article Tuesday on anti-smoking advocates wanting to raise the price of cigarettes another dollar.

I understand wanting people to stop smoking, but what happens when it works? The millions made off smokers will be gone and lost forever, then we'll be in even worse financial debt. Let adults do as they wish. It's not hurting you since the smoking ban.

I have an idea. Instead of sucking cigarette smokers dry, why don't we pass SB 1381 and help out patients who could use marijuana as a medicine and stand to make a few million or billion dollars at the same time?

[continues 113 words]

Mesa, Ariz. -- Thanks for publishing Steve Larson's thoughtful letter: "Time to pass med marijuana" (12-29-10). I have to wonder if politicians like Rep. Jim Sacia, who oppose the re-legalization of marijuana for medical purposes, are on the payroll of the Mexican drug cartels. If they are not, they might as well be because the policies they advocate are making the cartels famously wealthy.

The gangster Al Capone had hundreds of politicians and law enforcement officials on his payroll.

I thought Rep. Jim Sacia was a conservative and that true conservatives oppose nanny-state policies. Obviously I was wrong.

What could be more pro nanny-state than marijuana prohibition?

Kirk Muse Former Freeport resident Mesa, Ariz.

[end]

High Number of Fruitless Searches of Hispanics' Vehicles Cited As Evidence of Bias

Drug-sniffing dogs can give police probable cause to root through cars by the roadside, but state data show the dogs have been wrong more often than they have been right about whether vehicles contain drugs or paraphernalia.

The dogs are trained to dig or sit when they smell drugs, which triggers automobile searches. But a Tribune analysis of three years of data for suburban departments found that only 44 percent of those alerts by the dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia.

[continues 1383 words]

Stockton, Ill. -- This letter is directed to Rep. Jim Sacia and the other three local House members who voted no on the recent Medical Marijuana bill, SB 1381.

What we have here is a mindset called "Reefer Madness Mentality," which is caused by years of government lies, distortions and propaganda.

To deny relief to sick and suffering people is inhumane.

We now have 15 states and Washington D.C. that allow the compassionate use of medical marijuana. Let's hope that Illinois will be next.

Steve Larson

Stockton

[end]

One of the Daily Herald's most important editorials of 2010 was published almost six months ago. Its message bears repeating now.

We must wage a war on drug abuse. That should be the resolve of law enforcement, our communities, our schools and ourselves.

Our first editorial was written in the wake of a Roosevelt University study that was definitive proof of heroin's hold on our suburban teens and young adults. Death by heroin was up 130 percent in Lake County, 150 percent in three years in McHenry County and it doubled in two years in Will County. It also showed that the majority of teens discharged from hospitals after heroin treatment are from the suburbs, including 25 percent from suburban Cook and 38 percent from the collar counties.

[continues 370 words]

Mr. Dan Linn, the director of Illinois NORML, wants this state to legalize cannabis for taxation purposes to help the state out of its debt and for supposedly adult consumption.

That's purely irresponsible. Underage usage would still be there, the same as with alcohol, and would cause health issues and other problems and even deaths.

The Illinois state lottery was supposed to go for schools and help with some social programs. Take a good and honest look at these now -- and you want the state to legalize cannabis?

Joe Pasternak

Elk Grove Village

[end]

Jack Riley left El Paso, Texas, to become the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's top man in Chicago. Even though he's 1,500 miles from the border now, Mexico's war against drug cartels still matters to him. It should matter to all of us. More than 90 percent of the marijuana, cocaine and heroin in the Chicago area enters the U.S. from Mexico. Drug rings are expanding into the Midwest to control distribution with violence a good bet to follow.

[continues 428 words]

To the Editor:

Illinois is at its "Gettysburg" in the war on medical marijuana.

We have one last chance at SB 1381: The Compassionate Use of Cannabis Act.

The well-being of thousands of sick and dying, poor and rich alike, hinge on victory. Please join me in this patriotic, historic battle for freedom.

A few more representatives are needed to join the vast majority of adults and religious leaders on this issue - Rep. Jack Franks being one.

Let's not forget the root of medical marijuana prohibition. Its seed was planted by President Nixon, against the recommendation of the Shafer Commission.

[continues 160 words]

In all the best movies about Prohibition, federal agents at some point raid a warehouse of illegal booze, smash the barrels of beer with axes and pose triumphantly for the press cameras.

They pretend not to know -- or, worse, really are unaware -- that they are on the losing side of history.

We like to watch such movies with a beer in hand.

Precisely the same story played out again Thursday in Chicago, but with marijuana instead of beer. Federal agents held a news conference to announce they had confiscated 11 tons of pot in a raid on a warehouse in Chicago Heights.

[continues 208 words]

When a young mother is killed trying to protect her 2-year-old son from stray bullets, then it is easy to understand why some of us are calling for the National Guard to help curb the violence.

So far, police haven't said what motivated two armed men to storm into a barbershop in Sacramento, CA with guns blazing. The gunmen injured six people and killed Monique Nelson, as she tried to strap her son into a car seat and escape the violence.

[continues 584 words]

Dan Linn is correct (Legalized cannabis could ease state debt, Fence Post, Nov. 28); Illinois need only look at Denver and Colorado.

Many cities and towns have been collecting tax revenue associated with medical marijuana sales in Colorado and newspapers have reported it. On Nov. 23, the Denver Post reported that so far this year Denver collected over $2.2 million from dispensaries. Tax revenue in Colorado Springs, as reported in the Gazette, is expected to bring $600,000 this year and $1.2 million to city coffers in 2011, and could fund the ongoing costs of employing eight to 10 new firefighters or cops. And when cannabis is legalized (and it will be legalized) tax revenues will further increase.

Cannabis is here for the duration of time, and Illinois needs the money as much or more than any other state in America. Imagine that, millions of citizen that can hardly wait to pay taxes.

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

[end]