SALISBURY -- The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is conducting tests to see if heroin used by six people who ended up at Peninsula Regional Medical Center Thursday was laced with a substance even more dangerous than the drug itself.

The tests followed an unusual day for Wicomico health officials Thursday, who were notified of the rash of hospital cases that afternoon. Dr. Judith Sensenbrenner, director of the county's health department, said six people with similar symptoms arrived at the hospital between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Thursday, with difficulty breathing and unconsiousness.

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Prosecutors' Actions In Drug Case Were Ethical, Office Says

The office of Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein is mounting a vigorous defense of two of his federal prosecutors accused of misconduct in a drug conspiracy case that could end with the death penalty.

In a recent 58-page court filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah A. Johnston wrote to a federal judge that her colleagues, Jason M. Weinstein and Steven H. Levin, "conducted themselves professionally and ethically" despite the accusations.

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University of Maryland students celebrated student government election results yesterday with a bottle of bubbly -- nonalcoholic, of course - -- and a freshman broke into a mellow, Phish sort of victory dance.

Not only had they elected new student leaders, but nearly two-thirds of the undergraduates who voted endorsed a referendum to reduce penalties for students caught with marijuana so that they would be treated the same as alcohol violations -- a result with much symbolic weight but no actual power to change the school's policies.

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Experts say knowledge is power, especially when dealing with adolescents' exposure to drugs and alcohol.

With this in mind, PTSOs from Severna Park high and middle schools have joined forces to bring a "Street Drug Update" talk by Michael Gimbel, director of the Sheppard Pratt Office of Substance Abuse Education & Prevention to Severna Park families from 7 to 9 p.m. April 26 at the middle school.

The new training program is for school administrators, counselors, student assistance teams, teachers, nurses, coaches, students and parents.

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University of Maryland students celebrated student government election results yesterday with a bottle of bubbly -- nonalcoholic, of course -- and a freshman broke into a mellow, Phish sort of victory dance.

Not only had they elected new student leaders, but nearly two-thirds of the undergraduates who voted endorsed a referendum to reduce penalties for students caught with marijuana so that they would be treated the same as alcohol violations -- a result with much symbolic weight but no actual power to change the school's policies.

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Drug suspect armed with sharp object at Northeastern District building; barricade situation follows attack on officer during questioning

A suspect armed with a sharp object barricaded himself in a room with a hostage after attacking a police officer at the Northeastern District police station in Baltimore today, police said.

The suspect, who had been arrested on drug charges, was being questioned by officers around noon when he broke free of his restraints and attacked one of his interrogators, said Officer Troy Harris, a Baltimore police spokesman.

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As the state legislature barrels ahead to the session's closure at midnight tomorrow, chances for passage of a bill to punish drug dealers in some of Annapolis' most vulnerable neighborhoods don't look good.

The bill would expand "drug-free zones," the 1,000-foot buffer around schools where criminal penalties are doubled, to day-care facilities, recreation centers and bus stops. Most affected neighbors and local elected officials, as well as the Annapolis Police Department, State's Attorney's Office and Board of Education, support the measure.

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Court Hears Appeals of Women Convicted After Babies Born With Drugs In Systems

Lawyers for two Talbot County women convicted of reckless endangerment after their babies were born with cocaine in their systems argued before Maryland's highest court yesterday that using criminal law to regulate the conduct of pregnant women is unconstitutional and potentially harmful to both mother and child.

The state held in both cases that the women, Kelly Lynn Cruz and Regina Kilmon, had violated Maryland's reckless endangerment statute, and that the prosecutions were a tool for protecting children. But Assistant Attorney General Mary Ann Ince had little chance to defend that position because of questioning by Court of Appeals judges.

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O'Malley Supports Anti-Meth Move

Mayor Martin O'Malley will announce his support today for a law to limit the sales of cold medication used in methamphetamine production, his gubernatorial campaign said yesterday.

At a speech at the Western Maryland Democratic Summit in Allegany County today, O'Malley will unveil a seven-point plan to deal with the drug, which appears to be increasingly prevalent in the state.

"As too many rural, and increasingly suburban and urban, communities know, the production of methamphetamine is an emerging threat to our families and our state," O'Malley said in a statement.

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Federal Convictions Could Keep Former Partners in Jail For Life

Detectives William A. King and Antonio L. Murray tried to explain it all. Their names surfaced in the infamous Stop Snitching video because they said drug peddlers feared them. They stole cocaine and heroin to give to informants because they said their training endorsed it. Their own police department abandoned them because, they said, commanders dare not admit that cracking the drug trade means breaking the rules.

Yesterday, a jury in U.S. District Court in Baltimore rejected every one of those explanations and convicted the Baltimore police officers of acting no better than the drug dealers they were sworn to arrest. Convicted on federal charges of carrying a gun during multiple robberies and conspiracy to sell drugs, King and Murray could spend the rest of their lives in prison. The guilty verdicts for running a renegade drug operation were an extraordinary turn of fate for King, the son of a police officer, and Murray, who had been shot in the line of duty and returned to uniform only to face a slew of public corruption charges.

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Police See Warning in Rising Number of Labs, Seek New Laws

The first methamphetamine lab discovered by Anne Arundel County police was found last summer in a garage behind a two-story house in a leafy, middle-class Severna Park neighborhood. Soon after, another one was found, in a Lothian trailer park. Weeks later, there was another: in a shed near a ring where horseback riding was taught in Millersville.

Labs for making the addictive drug - which has ravaged some Midwestern and Western communities but has been relatively rare in Maryland - have also been discovered in Caroline, Carroll, Cecil and Harford counties. The nine labs uncovered in the state in 2005 represent the most found by authorities in a single year. There were three in 2004.

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The three students from Indiana piled into a shiny blue Mazda last week and made an 11-hour trek to their ideal spring break destination: Anne Arundel County.

Anne Arundel may have less girls-gone-wild cachet than South Beach, but authorities said it was an ideal location for their plot to buy 20,000 pills of an over-the-counter cold medicine used to make methamphetamine. The students could have received a 20-year prison term for possessing that much of the drug in Indiana, but in Maryland it's not a crime.

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If deciding the new representatives to head the SGA next year isn't enough incentive, students now have another reason to cast a ballot in this year's election: to express their opinion on whether the university should relax its policy regarding marijuana use.

At its Wednesday meeting, the Student Government Association approved a referendum question that asks students whether they think university punishments for marijuana use and possession should be equivalent to the looser punishments for underage drinking.

"The overriding message is that we want to engage student opinion regarding the university's current drug and alcohol policies," said Chris Biggs, an SGA residential legislator and sponsor of the referendum. "We think this is extremely important because there is a huge discrepancy between underage drinking and marijuana."

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One of two Baltimore narcotics detectives accused of selling illegal drugs testified at his federal trial yesterday that confiscated heroin he gave to a confidential informant was part of an off-the-books, but acceptable, policing technique designed to apprehend some of the city's top drug dealers.

In front of an expectant jury that had before heard the officer's voice only on wiretap recordings, Detective William A. King answered questions from the witness stand for more than four hours. But his calm demeanor turned testy and defensive when prosecutors called his tactics criminal, leading to the most combative moments of the two-week trial.

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Prosecutors Say Calls Show Drug Dealing, Police Corruption

The indicted police officers sit in federal court every day but have never spoken to the men and women who will decide their fates.

For two weeks, detectives William A. King and Antonio L. Murray have watched silently as jurors absorbed hour upon hour of the officers' conversations that were secretly recorded by the FBI.

Federal prosecutors say wiretaps show how King and Murray masterminded an illegal drug-dealing operation, nicknamed "grinding," that targeted old and addled addicts in West Baltimore. Often, according to the tapes, the officers "grinded" before or after their regular shifts, calling it their real work.

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Complaints About Officers Allowed

The trial of three East Baltimore men with long criminal records accused of being drug dealers unraveled before it began when a Circuit Court judge decided that jurors could hear that dozens of complaints had been filed against two police officers involved in the case.

Saying the ruling "gutted" her case by raising undue suspicion on the police, the prosecutor dropped charges last week against Gary Payne, 43; Harold Richardson, 36; and Kenneth Richard, 37. Each had faced six drug distribution and possession charges that could have put them in prison for up to 10 years without parole.

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Holding up badges and 9 mm Glock semiautomatic pistols, a federal prosecutor told jurors Tuesday that two Baltimore police officers being tried on corruption charges used their positions "as a vehicle to rob, to rob people on the streets of drugs."

"They preyed upon the very people they were sworn to protect," Assistant U.S. Attorney A. David Copperthite said in his opening statement.

He called the actions by Officers Antonio L. Murray and William A. King a product of "insatiable greed."

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Edward R. Thomas wanted a dirt bike.

Badly.

Badly enough to kill, Montgomery County prosecutors convinced a jury last week. It found him guilty of first-degree murder in the July 17 slaying of a Rockville teenager who seemed ripe for ripping off.

"When I think my son died for someone to get a dirt bike," said Maria Solaun, the victim's mother, "that's horrible."

Bijan M. Nassirdaftari, 17, was one of three young Montgomery males killed last year in drug swindles, according to police.

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NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico -- The weary residents of this border city at the center of an escalating drug war had hoped that hundreds of federal agents would end the violence that killed 181 people last year.

But drug-related crime has not let up since the federales arrived, and 31 people have been killed this year, more than during the corresponding period last year.

Eight months after President Vicente Fox sent soldiers and federal agents to take back the city from drug traffickers, the killings in Nuevo Laredo continue, and brazen attacks remain commonplace. Plans to gradually withdraw federal agents have been put on hold, and police are having trouble recruiting officers.

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Both conservatives and liberals have waged their war on drugs for decades, and they have reaped nothing but drug gangs, drug lords, robberies, thefts, muggings, murders, dirty needles, overcrowded prisons, decimated families.....

Conservatives never cease to fascinate me, given their professed devotion to "freedom, free enterprise, and limited government" and their ardent support of policies that violate that principle. One of the most prominent examples is the drug war. In fact, if you're ever wondering whether a person is a conservative or a libertarian, a good litmus-test question is, How do you feel about the war on drugs? The conservative will respond, "Even though I believe in freedom, free enterprise, and limited government, we've got to continue waging the war on drugs." The libertarian will respond, "End it. It is an immoral and destructive violation of the principles of freedom, free enterprise, and limited government."

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