Monday marked 20 years since University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. If you're of a certain age and lived in the Washington, D.C., area in 1986, the death rocked you. How could Len Bias, the 22-year-old anticipated savior of the Boston Celtics, with everything to live for, be dead? The story needs to be retold. "These players now are a different generation," said Charles Barkley, who would have been Bias' NBA contemporary. "They don't know stuff that happened last week." [continues 1024 words]
A survey conducted by the National Association of Counties polled law enforcement agencies in 500 counties in 45 states. Fifty-eight percent of those agencies ranked methamphetamine as their worst illegal drug problem. If a majority of local law enforcement officials say methamphetamine is the biggest illegal drug problem they face, why is the national drug use prevention effort focused most on marijuana? The reason is job security. Back in the A90s, the Drug Enforcement Agency and Office National Drug Control Policy got failing grades by the Government Accounting Office because they were unable to show that they were accomplishing anything. The White House set a new goal for the ONDCP: reducing (by specific percentages) the number of illegal drug users in the United States. [continues 137 words]
Exasperated by pessimism about the "war on drugs," John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, says: Washington is awash with lobbyists hired by businesses worried that government may, intentionally or inadvertently, make them unprofitable. So why assume that the illicit drug trade is the one business that government, try as it might, cannot seriously injure? Here is why: When Pat Moynihan was an adviser to President Nixon, he persuaded the French government to break the "French connection" by which heroin came to America. Moynihan explained his achievement to Labor Secretary George Shultz, who said laconically: "Good." [continues 669 words]
The life of the law, Oliver Wendell Holmes famously remarked, has not been logic but experience. When it comes to marijuana, the life of the law has been neither logic nor experience, but rather sheer unadulterated craziness. Another chapter in that disgraceful history was written this week, when the Supreme Court refused to overturn a federal law ordering the national government to ignore state laws that allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for their patients. The six justices who voted to uphold the law did so on the basis of this argument: Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. If states make it legal for individuals or organizations to cultivate marijuana for medicinal purposes, some of the drug may end up on the black market. Once it's in the stream of commerce, there's no way to ensure that it won't cross state lines. Hence the federal government has the authority to enforce federal laws that make growing a single marijuana plant in one's own house, for personal medical use under the supervision of a doctor, a federal crime. [continues 452 words]
WASHINGTON - With the parties warring over the composition of the federal judiciary, and with a Supreme Court vacancy perhaps impending, Americans should use the court's end-of-term decisions as whetstones on which to sharpen their sense of the ambiguities in the categories - "liberal," "conservative," "activist," "practitioner of judicial restraint" - used when judges are discussed. Consider the case arising from the destruction, by agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency, of Diane Monson's home-grown marijuana plants, a case about which the court's two most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, disagreed. [continues 685 words]
What do medical marijuana laws, racial segregation and Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument have in common? The states' rights argument has been used to defend each of them. Alabama is defending California's controversial medical marijuana law, which was passed in a voter initiative in 1996. It allows sick people to use marijuana to relieve symptoms under certain circumstances. In October, Alabama Attorney General Troy King joined Louisiana and Mississippi in submitting a friend of the court brief in Ashcroft v. Raich, the California medical marijuana case currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. [continues 723 words]
Mike Kane/Post-Herald Jerime Dunaway, 33, waits in line for his methadone dose Thursday at the Northwest Alabama Treatment Center in Bessemer. Jerime Dunaway spends $70 a week on gas for driving his truck from Montevallo to Bessemer every morning to see his doctor before work. Dunaway, 33, said he'd like to find counseling and treatment closer to home, but he'll continue to make the long drive. He has no other choice. Before he started going for daily methadone treatments three years ago, he was addicted to Oxycotin and heading toward an early grave, he said. [continues 1360 words]
Walters Defends Handling Of Meth War The Bush administration's "war on terror" has come to Alabama to fight drugs. Bush drug czar John Walters visited Alabama on Wednesday to assure people the government is doing a good job fighting the drug war. He compared his agency's efforts to the U.S. government's efforts to fight al-Qaida. "We're trying to do to them what we do in terror," Walters said at the U.S. attorney's office. [continues 247 words]
Although Shelby County high school students are drinking less, pushing away more packs of smokes and using fewer drugs than before, middle school students have increased their substance use, according to a survey released by the school system. Nearly 8,661 Shelby County school system students in grades six to 11 participated in the Kentucky-based Pride Survey, an anonymous standardized survey given to middle and high schools students across the nation. The survey charts both substance use and behavioral trends. [continues 339 words]
Pilot, passenger unhurt after craft falls on county road. An Alabama Department of Public Safety helicopter fell from the sky Tuesday morning during a routine search for patches of marijuana plants in north Jefferson County. The aircraft, a Bell Jet Ranger, crashed from a low altitude onto Linn's Crossing Road north of Graysville. The cause of the crash had not been determined early today; it is being investigated by the department and the National Transportation Safety Board. Both the pilot, Alabama State Trooper John Trimble, and passenger, Trooper Mike Manley were unharmed, according to Sgt. Tim Sartain, public information officer for the department. Both were treated at Carraway Methodist Medical Center and later released. [continues 140 words]
Select groups of Clay-Chalkville High School students are one step closer to mandatory drug testing after a Jefferson County Board of Education committee recommendation Tuesday. The matter now goes to the school board for a vote. The board's instructional services advisory committee recommended approval of the pilot program, which if approved by the full board would test students participating in sports and other extracurricular activities such as band and Scholar's Bowl. Students seeking to park on school property would also be tested. Students who do not drive to school or participate in extracurricular activities will not be forced to participate in the drug testing. [continues 635 words]
School Officials, Students Support Plan Clay-Chalkville High sophomore Jacob Sittre, 15, said the widespread use of drugs among students has given the school an unflattering nickname. "They call us the 'fighting pharmacy,' " he said as his friends nodded in agreement. While school officials downplay the prevalence of drugs at Clay-Chalkville, they acknowledge it's a problem they want to cut off before it gets worse. As a result, Clay-Chalkville High officials want to institute a pilot random drug-testing program at the beginning of the school year in August. [continues 769 words]
I reside just outside of Tupelo, Miss., and have friends and relatives all over Alabama. Knowing both of these states quite well, I am fully aware of the history of the Southern court system and not so sure I agree that we have what is referred to as "The New South." A few weeks ago I had the nasty displeasure of just one afternoon in an Alexander City courtroom. If it weren't for the fact that a person's life and future were in the hands of a disgrace of a judge, I would have been laughing hysterically and removed from the courtroom. [continues 434 words]
Conspicuously absent from your otherwise excellent Jan. 5 editorial on Chief Justice William Rehnquist's call for judicial sentencing discretion was the role of the drug war. The land of the free now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, in large part due to the war on some drugs. It's not possible to wage a moralistic war against consensual vices unless privacy is eliminated, along with the Constitution. The steady rise in warrantless police searches, drug-sniffing dogs in schools and random drug testing have led to a loss of civil liberties in America, while failing miserably at preventing drug use. [continues 112 words]
In unusually strong language, Chief Justice William Rehnquist has asked Congress to repeal a law it passed last year that restricts judges' sentencing discretion. And he was particularly critical of efforts by Attorney General John Ashcroft and House Republicans to identify and monitor judges who depart from federal sentencing guidelines, a ham-handed way of trying to browbeat judges into imposing stricter sentences. In his year-end report on the judiciary, Rehnquist said the monitoring "could appear to be an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their duties." He need not have used the conditional. [continues 181 words]
Attorney General John Ashcroft is becoming a prolific writer of memos to the 94 U.S. attorneys. His latest instructs them to pursue the toughest possible charges and seek the severest sentences possible. And he also ordered them to limit the use of plea bargains. The goal, he said, was to bring uniformity and consistency to federal criminal prosecutions. By itself, the order is not unreasonable. It reflects the Bush administration's stand on law enforcement, and it returns to a similar order the department issued in 1989 during the administration of Bush senior. The order was relaxed during the Clinton administration. And Ashcroft's order has reasonable exceptions on plea bargaining, for example, to reward cooperation and clear overcrowded dockets. [continues 289 words]
The nation's prison and jail population rose again last year, to 2,166,260, a record. The increase comes at a time when crime is falling and state and local governments are struggling to close budget deficits. The price of imprisoning so many Americans is too high, in scarce tax dollars and in wasted lives. Congress and state legislatures should find ways to reduce the number of people behind bars. The population of federal and state prisons and local jails grew 2.6 percent last year, according to new Justice Department data. Since 1995, it has risen nearly 30 percent. [continues 301 words]
I had the displeasure of hearing the nation's drug czar speak in Guntersville June 30. I had intended to ask some very tough questions of this man but the planned question-and-answer session was abruptly cancelled and Walters was quickly whisked away in a bright yellow Humvee amidst tight security. Walters' speech was disappointing. Taxpayers should reasonably expect an $11 billion drug war budget to produce a distortion of the facts somewhat less transparent than that presented by Walters. Look what the Iraqi information minister was able to accomplish on a limited budget. [continues 349 words]
Shelby parking rule pushes drug tests one step further Nick Staas sat wedged, lanky legs stretched out, on institutional chairs between his dad and his best friend in the lobby of the Shelby County services building in Pelham last week. Rain pummeled the parking lot; just another hot, gray thunderstorm on another hot, gray summer day. But Staas didn't care. He was getting his driver's license. "It's pretty cool," he said with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. [continues 1472 words]
A Guest Editorial From The San Francisco Chronicle: The idea that one could be punished for life for stealing a couple of library books may sound absurd, but it's a fact in Pennsylvania. There, a sweeping law forever bans the thief from working in a nursing home or with the elderly. In New York, a criminal conviction could ban you for life from more than 100 different jobs, including plumbing and barbering, even if you were a model prisoner and have long since served your time. [continues 237 words]
