Regarding Bernard Long's letter "Pot not good," May 14, concerning the issue of medical marijuana, and his assertion that marijuana is more dangerous than tobacco, I would direct him to the Centers for Disease Control website, where he will find the following statistics.

Worldwide tobacco related deaths average approximately 5 million per year, and this number is expected to rise to 8 million by 2030. In the U.S., tobacco-related deaths average 480,000 per year, or 1,300 per day. Nearly 1 in 5 deaths in this country are tobacco-related.

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Four Norman, Okla., police officers have been fired for allegedly distributing a controlled and dangerous substance.

To date, only one has been charged, and the other three have filed grievances to get their jobs back or some other settlement. What's up with this, like the ex-chief of police in Galena, Kan., Cameron Arthur, who was paid $120,000 because he was fired and told go to away quietly? Why? When the supposed good are bad, they are by far the worst, aren't they? Why is it so hard to get rid of bad cops, and why the big payoffs and special treatment? Is it some kind of hush money, you know the old get-out-and-write-tickets meetings that we are not supposed to know about? We know all about that, but for those like Arthur it must be something else. A $120,000 payment is a lot of money to go away, isn't it? Newly released data from the U.S. Justice Department show the number of women in state and federal prisons has topped 100,000 for the first time. The new figures show the incarceration rate is growing much faster for women than men. Meanwhile the overall prison population is continuing to increase, despite a drop or leveling off in the crime rate in the past few years. Longer sentences - especially for drug crimes - and fewer prisoners granted parole or probation are main reasons for the expanding U.S. prison population.

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