Many Arkansas districts randomly drug test middle and high school students who participate in sports or other extracurricular activities. The reasoning behind these tests, according to school handbooks, is twofold - mixing drugs and physical activity endangers the health of students, and students who wear school jerseys are ambassadors, representing the school rather than themselves. A positive test typically means suspension from athletics or other extracurricular activities. In 2002, UALR journalism professor Bruce Plopper and three other families sued the Conway School District for drug testing or threatening to test their middle school students. According to Plopper, both the U.S. and Arkansas Constitutions have clauses that protect against this testing. Before the case made it to court, Conway suspended its testing program, and in 2007 the district officially dropped the policy. "This was an unwarranted invasion of privacy," Plopper said. "They were testing students who hadn't done anything wrong, students with high grades." [continues 81 words]
Even if Arkansas voters should approve of Issue 5, the Medical Marijuana Act, in the Nov. 6 election, therapeutic weed won't be accessible soon. "Issue 5 is not a get-out-of-jail-free card," says Jerry Cox, who heads the Family Council, a coalition of fundamentalist churches who oppose marijuana in the same way they oppose abortion and gay marriage. Regardless of Issue 5, possession of marijuana for any purpose will still be illegal under federal law. (Though that hasn't stopped 17 other states from legalizing medical marijuana, with varying results. Medical marijuana is legal also, through congressional action, in the District of Columbia. Arkansas, generally considered a backward sort of state, would experience a change of image should it become the first Southern state to approve medical marijuana.) [continues 829 words]
As Montel Williams waited his turn to speak at a state Capitol rally for medical marijuana, he noticed leading opponents of the proposal, Jerry Cox and Larry Page, were in attendance, and carrying on private conversations while supporters of the act testified to the terrible suffering they and members of their families had endured because they couldn't legally obtain marijuana, the only substance that gave relief. That opponents wouldn't even listen to the other side, Williams found appalling. He'd never seen such callousness, he said. "Aren't we supposed to be a compassionate nation?" [continues 468 words]
Family Council president Jerry Cox opposes the ballot measure to legalize medical marijuana. "It's a family values issue," he said. So, let's talk medicine, marijuana - and, especially, family values. I began suffering undiagnosed leg pain in childhood. At 17, my doctor's best advice was to take aspirin until my ears started ringing. I married, had two children, and started smoking marijuana when I returned to college in my 20s. To my surprise, the leg pain abated. I continued to smoke for almost 25 years, roughly a joint a day. As I never smoked in secret, I'm betting I've got a perspective on marijuana and family values that Mr. Cox does not. [continues 696 words]
The fight is underway in earnest for voter approval of the initiated act to allow sick people to obtain marijuana for medical use, with doctors' approval, at state-regulated dispensaries. In recent days, the Family Council Action Committee unveiled a wholly dishonest and blatantly racist TV ad against the act, and the Arkansas Baptist Convention launched an email campaign, also filled with misinformation. In response Chris Kell of Arkansans for Compassionate Care, the committee working for passage of the measure, offered the following point-by-point rebuttal of the opposition. Read an extended version with citations from the act itself at arktimes.com/medicalmarijuana. [continues 518 words]
One proposal was lost in the flurry of petition-gathering this summer for initiatives ranging from ethics reform to casinos. Advocates for the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act - which would make Arkansas the 18th state, and the first in the South, to legalize personal use of marijuana for the purposes of medical relief - got an early start, but have had little visibility over the past few months. While lacking the big money or the big names attached to other direct democracy initiatives this season, the group calling itself Arkansans for Compassionate Care was able first to turn in the necessary number of signatures to reach an extra 30-day "cure" period, and then submitted an additional 74,000 signatures last week. Given that the percentage of valid signatures to place the act on the ballot has been high from the get-go, it seems likely that medical marijuana initiative is on its way to the November ballot. [continues 548 words]
One of the medications prescribed by my personal physician for my arthritis pain and inflammation has the rare potential side effect of death. In other words, if I take this medication as prescribed, I can die as a result. On the other hand, marijuana has never been documented to have killed a single person in the 5,000-year history of its use. For me, marijuana is the more effective medication. Right now, if adult citizens opt for the safer and more effective medication, they are subject to arrest and being sent to jail with violent criminals. Shouldn't adult citizens have the freedom to choose what goes into their own bodies in the privacy of their own homes? Kirk Muse Mesa, Ariz. [end]
Missing from the balanced report of Doug Smith on medical marijuana was the sad fact that every hour my profession spends chasing and arresting the non-problem causing marijuana user, the less time we have for the deadly DUI and those who hurt our children and women. When detectives fly around in helicopters looking for a pot garden, they are not arresting a rapist or child molester. When road officers are searching car after car for a baggie of pot, the deadly DUIs sail on by and kill innocents. Marijuana prohibition reduces public safety period. Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (ret) Dallas [end]
Many Are Ready, Including A Prominent Legislator. State Sen. Randy Laverty of Jasper says that after the news media reported last month on his proposal to legalize medical marijuana, he got more response than on any issue he'd been associated with in his 15 years as a legislator -- telephone calls, e-mails and personal contact. "And it was all positive. That never happens." Laverty says that at the next regular legislative session, in 2011, he'll introduce a bill to permit the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. [continues 558 words]
Dr. Joycelyn Elders, a living monument to the black experience in Arkansas, may be retired, but she's not retiring about the issues that made her a controversial surgeon general. Fourteen years after President Bill Clinton fired her as surgeon general of the United States for uttering one final impolitic remark, Dr. Joycelyn Elders is long into retirement, but hers is not a repose that the meek would envy or her many old critics would cheer. And if you were wondering, no, she never shut up or took up mincing words. [continues 3322 words]
Clarksville High School will spend $7,000 this year on random drug tests of students. The school is one of more than 100 in Arkansas that administers such tests. Don Johnston, Clarksville School District superintendent, hasn't seen studies that suggest such tests are effective. In fact, two studies by the University of Michigan suggest that random drug tests do nothing to reduce student drug use. Studies or no, Johnston says he believes the drug tests work in Clarksville, and that parents, for the most part, support the program. [continues 802 words]
When any legendary performer who's climbing up into his years comes anywhere close to Little Rock, I dial up his age, add about 10 years for hard living and road wear and, if that puts him anywhere near 80, which is the upper reaches of an average American male's life expectancy, I usually drop what I'm doing and catch a show. Apply that system on Friday and you'll feel an extra bit of urgency when you go hunting tickets. [continues 566 words]
At a particularly dismal moment in Martin Scorsese's "The Departed," a disgusted undercover cop mutters, "It's a nation of rats." Not quite. But the film and the recent flap in the Northeast over t-shirts that demand "Stop Snitchin' " are calling attention to a part of the legal system that critics say has gotten out of control. While it's impossible to get accurate counts due to the inherent secrecy of the practice, moderate estimates place the number of informants working for police agencies in the U.S. in the hundreds of thousands. [continues 1180 words]
Arkansas Ranks High In Penalizing Drug-Offender Students But Snyder Wants To End The Penalty Arkansas ranks eighth among the states in the percentage of college applicants who are denied federal financial aid because they've been convicted of drug offenses. Congressman Vic Snyder, a Democrat, is a co-sponsor of legislation to end the aid penalty. A group called Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), headquartered in Washington, said last week that 1,858 Arkansans had been denied federal college aid because of drug convictions since the penalty was enacted as part of the Higher Education Act of 2000. That's .27 percent of federal-aid applicants. Nationwide, nearly 200,000 would-be students have been denied, a percentage of .25. Indiana had the highest percentage of denials among the states, .50. [continues 486 words]
Attorneys general seek change in DEA policy. For months, full-page advertisements challenging government policy toward pain management doctors have been appearing in national magazines. "The government is waging an aggressive, intemperate, unjustified war on pain doctors," the headline on one ad says. It goes on to quote from a study published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian "think tank" in Washington: "By demonizing physicians as drug dealers and exaggerating the health risk of pain management, the federal government has made physicians scapegoats for the failed drug war. Even worse, the Drug Enforcement Administration's renewed war on pain doctors has frightened many physicians out of pain management altogether, exacerbating an already serious health crisis - the widespread treatment of intractable pain. Experts agree that tens of millions of Americans suffer from undertreated or untreated pain ... according to one 1999 survey, just one in four pain patients received treatment adequate to alleviate suffering." The ad was placed by Common Sense for Drug Policy, a "drug reform"organization. [continues 649 words]
Oxycontin Is Not the Problem, He Says. 'The DEA Is the Problem.' FORT SMITH - This is Dr. Robert Kale discussing the drug problem in America: "The drug problem has gotten worse since the inception of the DEA [federal Drug Enforcement Administration]. The pressure they put on caused an increase in price. When that happened, a whole bunch of entrepreneurs got in the business, just like Prohibition. Drugs hadn't been rampant in the schools before the DEA. In the '60s, amphetamines were widely available, but they weren't used recreationally. They were used to lose weight. Truck drivers used them to stay awake. [So did college students cramming for tests.] [continues 1909 words]
