His Duties Will Take on an International Focus

WASHINGTON -- Cedar City native Scott Burns was officially sworn in as second in command of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy on Friday, giving the former Iron County attorney even more responsibility in reducing drug use in America.

Burns, whose official new title is the deputy director of the office, will work closely with the office's director, John Walters, known as the "drug czar," and fill in for Walters as needed.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Former Iron County Attorney Scott M. Burns was officially sworn in as Deputy Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy on Friday.

Burns has served at ONDCP as the Deputy Director for State, Local and Tribal Affairs since 2002, where he has served as the principal advisor to White House drug czar John P. Walters, on federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement matters.

He has also served as the United States representative to the World Anti-Doping Agency, an international organization dedicated to reducing and eliminating performance-enhancing substances from sport.

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Editor:

Regarding David Servatius' thoughtful column, "Big pharma doesn't want to legalize" (Dec. 5): It's not just the pharmaceutical industry that has a vested interest in making sure marijuana is not legalized. Marijuana consumers consume substantially less alcohol than non-marijuana users. Beer and other alcoholic beverages and marijuana are a substitute for each other. The beer industry knows this. The alcoholic beverage industry knows this. Who is the biggest sponsor on TV of sporting events? The beer industry. So, why are sporting teams and the sports industry so concerned when a player tests positive for marijuana? Follow the money!

Kirk Muse

Mesa, AZ

[end]

Policy on Marijuania Is Hypocritical

Allow me to present Exhibit A in the case of Common Sense V. The United States of America.

Somewhere in this country, a man is sitting in a prison cell, wasting away. This man lived a normal middle-class American life up until his incarceration. He had paid his taxes and contributed to his community. He'd worked at a decent job. More than likely, he has a family trying to get by without him for the next 10 to 15 years. There is no chance of an early release for this man.

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Drug policies of the federal government negatively affect medical patients in need of medication and cause minorities to be prosecuted more than other drug offenders, according to a new book written by U professors.

Drugs and Justice: Seeking a Consistent, Coherent Comprehensive View, a book written by seven authors and four contributing authors from the U and Utah's legal community, says government drug policies are "incoherent" and explains why these "unjust" policies continue.

"Our legal system is a little schizophrenic -- with regards to drug policy it has multiple personalities," said Troy Booher, one of the book's main authors and a professor of law and political science at the U.

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It was disheartening to discover the U.S. Department of Justice that proclaimed Nov. 30 as National Methamphetamine Awareness Day last year chose not to this year.

Especially considering that during the time President Bush issued the declaration, criminals in China were disguising and shipping 43,000 pounds of pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in the manufacture of meth, by cargo ship to Michoacan, Mexico. This ingredient was intended to supply one of several huge meth labs that are now being established in Mexico, according to PR-USA.net.

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For the second year running, Utah County will observe National Methamphetamine Awareness Day on Nov. 30.

Utah County Commissioner Gary Anderson, Spanish Fork Mayor Joe Thomas, Mrs. Utah 2007 Tiffany Berg and State Rep. Mike Morley will speak at a dedicatory service in Spanish Fork that day.

Methamphetamine Awareness Day comes in the midst of "End Meth Now," a 10-month campaign that began in September to provide treatment and information about methamphetamines to Utah County citizens.

Methamphetamine abuse is the leading problem for women entering treatment programs at the Utah County Division of Substance Abuse. The Division of Substance Abuse program admitted 1,200 women for methamphetamine abuse treatment in the last five years.

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My dictionary defines the word incredible as, "not credible, seeming too unusual to be possible." That's what I thought when I read a letter to the editor in the Oct. 25 issue of The Spectrum & Daily News. It wasn't the ideal the writer espoused that aroused my consternation, but the thought process behind it. That, and a glaring lack of historical knowledge or perhaps just a misconception of history.

Included in the letter was a statement that, "God made a terrible mistake."

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It's marijuana harvest time in northern California, and Utah's interstates are flowing with millions of dollars in drugs and cash.

Drug traffickers will go to great lengths to hide drugs and cash to ensure police don't find their stashes, said Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Steve Winward. In a span of three days, UHP officers arrested 19 people and confiscated more than $2 million in drugs in Summit County.

Eight UHP officers, trained specifically to sniff out motorists trafficking drugs, pulled over hundreds of vehicles for traffic violations on Interstate 80 between Tuesday and Friday night, Winward said.

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The day after his boss proposed funding to help Mexico shut off the supply of methamphetamine to the United States, deputy U.S. drug czar Scott Burns was in Salt Lake City to praise a new advertising campaign to help reduce local demand for the drug.

"Much has been done, and there's a lot left to do on the supply side of the drug trade," Burns told the Deseret Morning News. "But the demand side comes down to individuals making choices. That is the key to thwarting the illegal drug trade."

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The Utah Supreme Court has ruled a child must have "reasonable" access to drugs in order for a parent to be charged under the child-endangerment statute. Prosecutors say the ruling narrows their ability to charge drug-dealing parents under the statute, but they have already worked on a remedy to amend the law during the next legislative session.

The ruling stems from two separate drug cases in which two women were arrested on drug and drug paraphernalia possession charges while children were in the homes. Both defendants were charged with child endangerment.

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Lawmakers have set aside a proposed ban on the hallucinogenic herb salvia divinorum.

Paul Ray, R-Clinton, who proposed listing the plant as a schedule 1 controlled substance, said federal regulators alerted him that they were close to reaching their own classification for salvia divinorum. The herb presently is unregulated under federal law. For at least five years, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has said it is researching the herb's effects and addictiveness, media reports say.

A spokeswoman on Wednesday said there is no clear schedule for when the DEA will conclude its examination and determine whether salvia divinorum should be regulated.

[end]

The Salt Lake Tribune has published many articles on drug use in the juvenile generation. I support The Tribune's effort to protect our children and eradicate this great evil in our midst. American schools are high priority targets for conscienceless drug pushers whose greed regularly puts the health and lives of our children at risk. These treacherous criminals prosper in spite of more than $20 billion spent every year by the federal government in the drug war. The drug problem among juveniles is severe; federal remedies are not working. Just suppose that $2 billion or $3 billion of the ineffective drug-war money was spent on drug dogs with handlers to protect the perimeters of the nation's public schools.

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Regarding the guest editorial, "Legalizing drugs wrong answer," printed Sept. 25, it should be expected that someone like the writer who makes his living from the status quo of drug prohibition would want to keep the status quo of drug prohibition.

Will re-legalizing drugs create more drug users? No.

In the 1960s Great Britain had fewer than 10,000 heroin addicts. Now it has more than 300,000 heroin addicts. What changed? The law. Up until 1971 they gave free heroin to the addicts. In 1971, with political pressure from the Nixon administration, Great Britain criminalized heroin possession and use. Now British heroin addicts rob, steal and recruit new heroin users to pay for their addiction.

With legalization and regulation, drug use will probably go down because users would have no financial incentive to recruit new users.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

[end]

'Know More' Will Take Zero Tolerance Approach

Practically anyone who has lived in Salt Lake City even a brief time knows Pioneer Park is a place where illegal drugs are sold.

The dealers know it. The buyers know. Even people who don't do drugs know of the park's drug-filled reputation. Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank also know, and say it's time for it to end.

Friday, Anderson and Burbank stood together on the east stairs of the Salt Lake City-County building to announce what the mayor called a "major campaign" in the fight against drugs.

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I read, with interest, the guest editorial, "Legalization of drugs ends raids." The writer states that he is the founder of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and would like drugs legalized because the drug war is not working and is costing us lives and money. In my experience, the cost of not enforcing drug laws is even more harmful to our society. In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I serve with the author of that op-ed as a member of the Citizens Review Panel.

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The Sept. 18 editorial, "Laud pot busts," makes the common mistake of assuming that punitive marijuana laws actually deter use. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United States than any European country, yet America is one of the few Western countries that use its criminal justice system to punish citizens who prefer marijuana to martinis.

Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. The short-term health effects of marijuana are inconsequential compared to the long-term effects of criminal records. Unfortunately, marijuana represents the counterculture to many Americans. In subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors, government is subsidizing organized crime.

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In Our View

Two pot busts have occurred in Washington County in the last week. OUR OPINION: We laud local law enforcement and its effort to enforce federal and state law's prohibition on marijuana. Any tips should be reported to the authorities.

The law has been broken and those responsible must be brought to justice. Detectives got a tip from a hunter who discovered a marijuana farm with 1,000 plants west of New Harmony on Sept. 1. Five days later, about 2,130 marijuana plants were removed from the Pine Valley Mountain near the Oak Grove campgrounds.

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Poppies were the first thing that British army Capt. Leo Docherty noticed when he arrived in Afghanistan's turbulent Helmand province in April 2006. "They were growing right outside the gate of our Forward Operating Base," he told me. Within two weeks of his deployment to the remote town of Sangin, he realized that "poppy is the economic mainstay and everyone is involved right up to the higher echelons of the local government."

The rumor was "that we were there to eradicate the poppy," he said. "The Taliban aren't stupid and so they said, 'These guys are here to destroy your livelihood, so let's take up arms against them.' And it's been a downward spiral since then."

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After years of calling Utah's highways home, the Grim Reaper has a new address.

He's living in your medicine cabinet under assumed names - oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, morphine, methadone. These are prescription medications that provide effective short-term and long-term pain relief to millions of people.

Without them, many would suffer terribly and some of those would seek relief in suicide.

Taken as prescribed, these powerful drugs can make life bearable for the pain-wracked patient. However, they are also addictive and, when taken recreationally or otherwise abused, can be ruthlessly lethal.

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