Businessman Has N. Texas Town in Sights for Facility to Produce Oil to Treat Epilepsy GUNTER - A cotton gin that sat empty for decades in this small North Texas town could be filled next year with the first cannabis plants legally grown in the state. Jae S. Lee/Staff Photographer Patrick Moran, president and co-founder of the Texas Cannabis Industry Association, aims to plant Texas' first legal cannabis plants in Gunter. A statute enacted last year paves the way for cultivation of non-psychoactive cannabis to produce CBD oil for treating people with severe epilepsy. [continues 1340 words]
U.S. Customs and Border Protection will pay $475,000 to a New Mexico woman who accused agents in Texas of forcing her to undergo illegal body-cavity probes. The woman was at an El Paso port of entry when a drug-sniffing dog jumped on her, according to court filings. The American Civil Liberties Union in Texas and New Mexico announced the settlement Thursday. Customs and Border Protection officers will also be required to undergo additional training. A lawsuit filed in 2013 said the woman - a 54-year-old U.S. citizen referred to only as Jane Doe - was "brutally" searched by customs agents in December 2012. [continues 72 words]
Messages of peace and love are briefly comforting after tragedies like those our country and city have recently experienced. But society needs to face harsh realities, beginning with stemming drug use. Through people I know well, I've seen marijuana become a gateway drug for some and a substance that can change personalities over many years. Legalizing recreational marijuana usage is absurd since most ingest it for one reason: to alter mood/ thoughts. That doesn't put anyone in a good mind-set to interact with law officers, ever. [continues 105 words]
Group Hosting 'Lake and Bake' Event Questions Need to Close the Entire Park The shutting down of an event hosted by marijuana legalization advocates Sunday at Lake Grapevine had nothing to do with the group's beliefs, Grapevine city officials said. The third annual Lake and Bake was shut down because DFW NORML didn't acquire a special events permit needed to host a gathering of that size, Grapevine Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Mitchell said. "Who they are had no bearing on why the event was closed off. They could be pushing beef jerky for all I know," Mitchell said. "It has nothing to do with who they are or what they represent. None of that is relevant." [continues 597 words]
Mark Davis: Those Pushing for This Don't Know What It Does to Neighborhoods Looks like this is my year for congratulating the Dallas City Council, although I do not pretend that the horseshoe is bending toward my worldview. First they found a way to reject the absurdity that there was a First Amendment obligation to host a porn convention on city property. Now, at least for the moment, they are resisting widespread urgings to loosen marijuana laws. As some state-level experiments plod forward with outright pot legalization, the Dallas issue involved ratcheting pot-possession penalties down from a jailable offense to a mere ticket. [continues 581 words]
Re: =93Texas tops in use of civil asset forfeiture =AD And it's likely to get worse, Audrey Redford says,=94 Monday Viewpoints. Thanks to Redford for her excellent column and to The News for continuing to call attention to the most corrupting influence in law enforcement =AD civil asset forfeiture. The injustice of police taking property without due process has not gone unnoticed. Right on Crime, a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the American Conservative Union Foundation and the Prison Fellowship, has given a series of seminars on the subject. It says civil forfeiture endangers individual rights and the integrity of law enforcement. [continues 108 words]
In just over a decade, Texas law enforcement collected more than half a billion dollars, $540.7 million, in cash and personal property from Texans suspected of breaking the law. Known as civil asset forfeiture, this legal practice leaves average Texans vulnerable to having their assets seized by police, no trial or proof of guilt necessary. Texas is among the worst states in the nation for civil asset forfeiture abuse. The Institute for Justice's "Policing for Profit" report gave Texas a D+ and said the state leads the nation in average annual forfeiture proceeds, at roughly $41.6 million. [continues 503 words]
Kingpin's Plea With U.S. Triggered Years of Bloodshed Reaching All the Way to Southlake Zetas Saw Gulf Cartel Leader As Traitor, Declared a War That Has Killed Thousands of People A plea agreement between a Mexican drug kingpin and the U.S. government helped generate a violent split between two drug cartels that led to the deaths of thousands of people in Mexico and along the Texas border, a Dallas Morning News investigation has found. A masked gunman fired multiple times at Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa with a 9 mm handgun through the passenger window of his Range Rover at Southlake Town Square in May 2013. Three Mexican citizens were arrested more than a year later and charged with stalking, and aiding and abetting in the hit. [continues 4074 words]
War on Drugs, for Example, Was an Assault on Black People, Robyn Short Says Whoever said, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" must have been on the receiving end of a very kind-speaking stick thrower. Words matter. Too often in American politics, words are used as weapons that can cause social damage that takes far longer to repair than any broken bone. Democrats and Republicans both use language to dehumanize, vilify and separate the people of this nation. By doing so, they indirectly foster a culture that permits harmful actions against "the other," and even deems such action morally correct. [continues 660 words]
If the Dallas City Council is unhappy with the recent crime spike, perhaps voting for the cite-and-release marijuana policy that failed last week could help keep officers on the streets working on eliminating violent crime. In 2014, 700,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana law violations and 620,000 of those violations were possession. Why are we putting resources to arrest individuals for a crime that is nonviolent? Dallas City Council had its chance to be proactive toward reducing violent crime by reducing the penalties for a nonviolent one. Now the council members who voted "nay" on the cite-and-release policy would rather blame Dallas Police Chief David Brown for an issue they could have helped solve. William Dominguez, Dallas/Lakewood [end]
Re: "Straight talk about heroin - We've got the epidemic all wrong, Maia Szalavitz says," March 20 Points. All of the dangerous myths about heroin that Szalavitz points out are important. The drug war is built on lies and misconceptions. It is most important to discredit the myth that "Tough love is the only thing that works. Programs that distribute clean needles and overdose-reversal drugs prolong addiction." Addition is most often an adaption to overwhelming trauma. The majority of injection drug users were abused as children. This can cause lifelong self-hatred. Even the man who started drug prohibition, Harry Anslinger, admitted it: Addicts often "grow up in homes that are not homes, with parents that are not parents, [so] they seek escape. Girl or boy, this is a familiar pattern." [continues 55 words]
The Dallas City Council made a mistake in snuffing out Dallas County's cite-and-release pilot plan to ticket low-level marijuana possession offenders rather than haul them off to jail. As Police Chief David Brown once conceded - although he ultimately opposed the plan - the idea was "just so damn practical." It would reduce crowding in the Dallas County Jail and allow police to focus on more serious crimes, such as burglaries and assaults, and address concerns such as downtown panhandling. But council members waded into the weeds and failed to navigate issues of collaboration with neighboring jurisdictions and whether to give officers discretion to arrest some offenders. It's disappointing that they lacked creativity or the will to work through these questions. We hope they' ll try again. [end]
Misdemeanor marijuana possession will still mean jail time in Dallas. Misdemeanor marijuana possession will still mean jail time in Dallas after City Council members spurned a much-discussed plan to instead issue citations to those caught with small amounts of pot. Council members on Wednesday got into the weeds of the proposed Dallas County pilot program and possible discrimination concerns before they rejected the so-called cite-and-release plan. Opposition from council member Sandy Greyson and Police Chief David Brown prevailed. [continues 541 words]
We've Got the Epidemic All Wrong, Maia Szalavitz Says America's epidemic of heroin and prescription pain reliever addiction has become a major issue in the 2016 elections. It's worse than ever: Deaths from overdoses of opioids - the drug category that includes heroin and prescription analgesics such as Vicodin - reached a high in 2014, rising 14 percent in a single year. But because drug policy has long been a political and cultural football, myths about opioid addiction abound. Here are some of the most dangerous myths, and how they do harm. [continues 1535 words]
City's Police Joining Efforts to Treat Addicts Instead of Jailing Them GRAPEVINE - Imagine a drug user walking into a police station and handing over his drugs and paraphernalia. But instead of police putting the addict behind bars, the would-be criminal is taken to a treatment facility to get help - without any charges being filed. That's the essence of a new nationwide initiative coming soon to at least one North Texas police department. Grapevine officials, stung by some drug-related deaths in recent years, said Wednesday that they will soon begin participating in the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative, or PAARI. The program takes a more compassionate approach toward drug users by treating addiction as a disease rather than simply a crime. [continues 824 words]
Legalization's Coming, They Say, and So Are the Potential Opportunities FORT WORTH - There was a day when you'd have been considered under the influence to think that Texas might ever legalize marijuana. Lawrence Jenkins/Special Contributor "the 'Green rush' is going to happen," said San Antonio lawyer Daniel Mehler, who stood out in a pot-leaf-patterned suit at the cannabis expo in Fort Worth. But this weekend, an event dedicated to that very notion drifted into the Fort Worth Convention Center. [continues 419 words]
GLOUCESTER, Mass. - Leonard Campanello leans forward. "There's no incentive or coercion that will stop an addict," he says. "This is the only long-term illness on the planet where if the disease presents itself, they kick you out" of treatment. I met Campanello at the Sugar Magnolias breakfast place on Main Street in downtown Gloucester, where he told me about his amazing offer to drug addicts. It's an offer that will change drug treatment in America, reduce crime, decrease drug-related deaths, drop incarceration and destigmatize substance abuse while restoring the community role of the police. It will save lives and money at the same time. This is a sea change. Before you get the wrong idea, let me assure you that Campanello, the chief of police in this city of 28,000, isn't a reformer. He doesn't look like a reformer. He's a cop, a fact-and-evidence guy. He speaks without hyperbole in a boots-on-the-ground Boston accent. You can't listen to him without having a sense that he is absolutely right. So what was that amazing offer? Last year, on March 5, after a string of fatal overdoses in Gloucester, Campanello made this declaration on the department's Facebook page: [continues 526 words]
Citing and releasing those caught with small amounts is a good idea, William R. Kelly writes As someone who studies the effectiveness of criminal justice policies, I rarely can applaud a specific policy in Texas. But I could do just that for a new pilot program taking shape in Dallas. The Dallas City Council is considering a program of ticketing rather than arresting individuals caught in possession of 4 ounces or less of marijuana. The procedure, known as cite and release, involves the police issuing a ticket to the offender, much like the procedure used for traffic violations. The ticket is a promise to appear in court on a particular date and time. [continues 580 words]
Re: "A Smarter Use of Time" Dallas should try citations over jail for pot," Dec.14 Editorials. According to FBI figures, national crime clearance rates in 2013 were abysmally low. In several cases in Dallas County in recent years, there were tragic consequences because officers did not respond quickly enough to calls. Police officers lose several hours of availability while transporting and booking suspects for nonviolent crimes. Suspects spend an average of 10 days in jail at a cost of about $60 per day. Only three Texas counties have adopted the cite-and-summons option since 2007: Travis, Hays and Midland. In all three, authorities encourage officers to use it. [continues 91 words]
Dallas Should Try Citations Over Jail for Pot David Brown is Dallas' police chief and, as such, admits he has mixed feelings when the question is whether his officers should write citations instead of booking into jail those arrested for small amounts of marijuana. You can see how this might be. The cop in Brown sees minor busts as one more tool to develop informants or just information that might lead to bigger busts. Every arrest is potential leverage over a suspect, even if it's just an ounce or two of weed. [continues 399 words]
