In 2010, Congress acted to reduce the disparity in mandatory minimum standards used to sentence criminals, particularly in regard to drug offenders. Last week, President Barack Obama announced that the Justice Department would take the next logical step - rescuing some of the thousands of inmates still serving time under the old, unfair sentencing rules. The president intends to canvass the entire federal prison population - - now numbering about 216,000 - to find inmates who are languishing behind bars under the unjustly harsh sentencing laws established during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. While the clemency program will not specifically target the roughly 7,000 inmates serving time for crack-related crimes, the guidelines for granting clemency would cover most of them. [continues 418 words]
Columbia - With little debate but many qualifications, a state Senate panel Thursday advanced a bill to allow the cultivation of hemp in South Carolina. That's industrial hemp, not marijuana. The distinction is why qualifications came with nearly every statement in the Senate agriculture subcommittee meeting. "This has nothing to do with legalizing marijuana," was the opening statement of subcommittee chairman Sen. Yancey McGill, D-Williamsburg. The bill, S.839, makes the difference clear. Industrial hemp is genetically different from the hemp plants that produce the quality of tetrahydrocannabinol that gives marijuana its mind-altering properties. The S.C. legislation also would remove industrial hemp from the state's current definition of marijuana. [continues 655 words]
LEXINGTON COUNTY, S.C. - Shortly after midnight on June 5, Lexington County sheriff's deputies and narcotics officers swooped down on a single-story home in one of the county's rural areas. Acting on a tip that people were inside cooking up batches of methamphetamine in not one but two kitchens, officers surrounded the house. Deputies tiptoed to a window and peered inside. "I was at this time able to detect a strong chemical emitting from the residence," investigator M.L. McCaw later wrote in his report. [continues 1280 words]
Coalition leader: 'Kids are looking for ways to get high. It's nothing new.' YORK -- More than a month ago, a Fort Mill teen played Russian roulette with her life. "A beautiful 17-year-old had taken two hits of "Mary Joy," York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant said Tuesday. Those hits of Mary Joy, one of several names for synthetic marijuana, made the teen so ill she wound up in the hospital. "She was incoherent and exhibiting extreme paranoia and anxiety, involuntary muscle jerking and elevated heart rate and blood pressure," Bryant said. "The girl could have died." [continues 534 words]
YORK -- Authorities say they busted a mail-order cocaine scheme Friday, the latest in a string of drug seizures in York County that have netted nearly a half-million dollars in narcotics. Friday's bust of more than $14,000 in cocaine mailed from Central America is part of $487,180 in drugs officials have confiscated within the past 10 days, said Marvin Brown of York County Multijurisdictional Drug Enforcement Unit. In one bust, officials recovered $300,000 in cocaine. Two days later, they seized another $173,000 worth. [continues 256 words]
Benson Says 'A Lot' Of Those Who Voted Him Out Were Once Arrested CHESTER -- Chester County Sheriff Robby Benson heard Wednesday why voters overwhelmingly chose to replace him. A day after Fort Lawn Police Chief Richard Smith defeated the two-term incumbent in the Democratic primary, the buzz around town was that Benson hadn't done enough to control the county's drug problem. But the man who will be sheriff until January has a few theories about why he lost. [continues 607 words]
Now that federal sentencing guidelines for drug convictions have been dramatically changed to undo the disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses, it is only fair to extend some leniency to those already serving time under the old standards. The glaring disparity between sentencing for offenses involving crack cocaine compared with those for powder cocaine has been a searing point of contention since the guidelines were established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission in the 1980s. Under those guidelines, the punishment for dealing 1 gram of crack cocaine -- the rough equivalent of a package of artificial sweetener -- was the same as the sentence for a dealer trafficking in 100 grams of powder cocaine. [continues 350 words]
CHESTER -- Police in Chester County Realize That Interagency Cooperation Is Essential to Fighting Drugs. But some agency heads disagree about how they should get along. In the coming weeks, Sheriff Robby Benson says he'll send proposals to the police chiefs in Fort Lawn and Great Falls, asking them to allow their officers to work together as a drug unit with his agency. Benson has had the same agreement with the Chester Police Department since 2003. Essentially, Benson says, the agreement means officers from Great Falls and Fort Lawn can work on cases outside of their towns as part of the drug unit. The chiefs and the sheriff would decide who heads the unit, and the agencies would divide the seized assets. [continues 607 words]
I'm writing about John McCann's column, "Don't miss the target of MLK day," on Jan. 14. In 1963 when Dr. King delivered his famous I have a dream speech, we had about 200,000 total prisoners. Today, largely because of our war on drugs, we have more than 2.2 million prisoners. It's obvious that the so-called war on drugs is actually a war on (politically selected) people -- and black people are the politically selected people. [continues 88 words]
Having to ask a pharmacist for a bottle of cold medicine is not too high a price to pay if it helps alleviate the rise in methamphetamine abuse. More than a dozen states already have laws that require retailers to sell Sudafed, Nyquil and other cold remedies only from behind the pharmacy counter. Sudafed and other cold relievers contain pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient used in "cooking" meth in makeshift labs across the nation. Now Congress is considering legislation that would make restrictions on the sale of these cold remedies a federal law. And while retailers once complained that the policy would be too inconvenient for customers, they and the pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs now seem willing to go along. [continues 164 words]
Court Says Users Face Federal Charges Despite State Laws WASHINGTON - A medical prescription is not a ticket to legal marijuana in California, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday in a 6-3 ruling in which the justices nonetheless expressed sympathy for those whose illnesses have been uniquely alleviated by the popular street drug. In an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court held that laws in California and 10 other states permitting marijuana cultivation, possession and use by persons with a doctor's prescription do not trump the federal government's authority under the Constitution to prosecute sick users on federal drug charges. [continues 605 words]
Last week, the General Assembly came a step closer to bringing some parity to drug sentencing in the state. A bill to equalize penalties for possession of crack and powder cocaine, passed in the Senate last month, now is making its way through the House. Currently, a first-time conviction for possessing crack is a felony that carries a five-year prison sentence and a $5,000 fine. But a first-time conviction for possessing powder cocaine is only a misdemeanor and carries a two-year prison sentence and $5,000 fine. [continues 281 words]
The case before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the validity of state laws governing the medical use of marijuana is more about federal authority to regulate interstate commerce than the use of pot to alleviate pain. And it is appropriate that the feds win this case. Nonetheless, this whole legal battle would be unnecessary if the federal government had responded in a reasonable way to the grass-roots (excuse the pun) movement to find a way to allow seriously ill patients to use marijuana as a palliative. Instead, the Justice Department, fueled by John Ashcroft's missionary zeal, has gone out of its way to challenge state laws allowing the use of medical marijuana, charging that such laws encourage drug abuse. [continues 348 words]
YORK -- Yer Vang lived through a slave labor camp and escaped being hunted by communists in Laos and Vietnam. But this Hmong man's escape from a possible 25-year prison term on an opium possession charge came from a dozen York County jurors. Vang, 44, was found not guilty of opium trafficking Wednesday night after a three-day trial. The construction worker had said in court he is an opium addict who possessed more than three-quarters of a pound of the sticky, brown poppy resin last October near York. Wednesday night he went home to his wife and 11 children, his lawyer Chris Wellborn said. [continues 707 words]
I am writing in response to the recent commentary, "Drug war is a war against the truth," by Paul Campos, professor of law at the University of Colorado. It appears that the professor's view of marijuana has not wavered since his comments in an article that appeared in the Feb. 11, 2001, edition of The Herald. The purpose of writing is not to discuss the legalization of illegal drugs or levels of potency, but rather to question the professor's rationalizations. The professor states that "tens of thousands of Americans are in prison today because we treat a drug (marijuana) that has never killed anyone as if it were far more dangerous than a drug (alcohol) that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year." I am certainly not going to dispute the professor's point that excessive use of alcohol can lead to death. But what information is he using to support his claim that marijuana has never killed anyone? [continues 253 words]
The York County drug task force didn't take a snow day Friday. Instead, agents used the record snow fall to their advantage. The task force rounded up eight people on various drug charges Friday after searching five houses. The snow turned out to be the agents' ally. For one thing, suspects weren't expecting the task force to be operating in weather that kept most area residents off the streets. For another, the snow muffled sounds and helped obscure officers who were keeping an eye on the houses. And, with all the suspects holed up inside their respective houses, there was little chance to warn friends that the task force was on the prowl. [continues 55 words]
YORK -- A local correctional officer was arrested this week and charged with trafficking crack, according to a York County Sheriff's Office report. Terrill Ambrose Banks of 4726 Cable Road, Sharon, was arrested about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday during a narcotics in-vestigation by the York County Multijurisdictional Drug En-forcement Unit, the report said. He was charged with trafficking 13.8 grams of crack near the Texaco convenience store at 4086 Chester Highway in York, the report said. Officers also seized an additional 6.4 grams of crack, $275 and Banks' vehicle valued at $1,200, the report said. Banks, 21, is a correctional officer with the Catawba Pre-Release Center, located at 1030 Milling Road. A supervisor at the Catawba Pre-Release Center declined comment Wednesday about Banks. [end]
It's the height of election season, and politics is being debated everywhere from the halls of Congress to community centers in small towns across the country. With so many important foreign policy issues claiming our attention, U.S. policy in Colombia is being overlooked. The Bush Administration plans to step up fumigation in Colombia this year, and has announced that it will begin spraying Colombia's beautiful and fragile national parks. Imagine if France or Germany wanted to spray our national forests with poison in order to rid the U.S. of tobacco. What a furor there would be. [continues 103 words]
York County's troubled teenagers are getting a second chance, and that's good not only for them but for all county residents as well. Last week, the York County Juvenile Drug Court held ceremonies for its first two graduates. And the county also initiated a new alcohol diversion program, an alternative to criminal penalties for first-time offenders aged 17 to 20. The drug court program is one of only a few in the state. It is financed by a three-year, $337,000 federal grant with a 25 percent match from the county. [continues 423 words]
Two drug convictions didn't faze him. He still smoked pot. The orange hair stayed, the studded dog collar wrapped around his neck stayed. Cops locked Zachary "Zack" Hefner up for two 48-hour stints and more. He went to juvenile boot camps, he failed two drug tests. He still smoked pot. "Stoned," Zack said. "I got stoned." His chances gone, then 14-year-old Zack Hefner had a choice with one day left in his free life: Spend the next six-plus years in jail or come clean. [continues 824 words]
