Five students are pushing for a greener society but the organization they recently chartered is not necessarily environmentally friendly. Loyola University is now home to the National Organization Reform of Marijuana Laws student organization NORML.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,is an activist group devoted to promoting the reform of marijuana laws. The purpose of NORML is to push the idea that marijuana users are not criminals and to inform people about marijuana and laws that are active, in the making, and planning to be proposed.

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After reading the letter about the disposal of drugs confiscated by the law, I want to express my desire to see these drugs legalized, taxed and regulated just as liquor is and probably by the same government branch. There is no reason whatsoever to prohibit the use of these drugs. There is a reason to enforce the misbehavior of individuals under the influence of drugs, just as individuals under the influence of alcohol.

Now don't give me the sad story about the person that has sunk to such a terrible state that we see occasionally. We see those that are in this same predicament from the use of alcohol.

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BATON ROUGE - More than 17 years ago, the St. Martin Sheriff's Office found a substantial amount of cocaine underneath the house of a candidate in the 3rd Congressional District race. But Jeff Landry says that's only half the story.

Landry, a businessman and attorney from New Iberia, said the illegal drugs belonged to a roommate and the 1993 documents linking him to the incident are being spread around by his opponent in the Oct. 2 Republican primary.

Landry also said he willingly signed the warrant allowing law enforcement officials to search the property at 123 W. Berard St. in St. Martinville.

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Marijuana is the most commonly abused illicit drug in the United States, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse website.

The average American teenager or young adult will experiment with marijuana sometime in high school or college. Ambitious students may altogether shun socially stigmatized hallucinogenic drugs, but many of us hold less lofty personal standards, especially as adolescents.

Conviction for possession of marijuana will strip even a 4.0 undergraduate of his student loans for one year. Repeat offenders fare worse: A second offense will suspend one's student loans for two years, and after three strikes ... well, you know the saying. Third-time offenders will be indefinitely barred from obtaining student loans, as mandated by the Drug Provision of the Higher Education Act.

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Re: "Forfeiture law stacked against Louisiana property owners" (June 22): Thank you for lighting a candle on the shameful, dark practice of my colleagues to go around state law to seize property from citizens. Worse, we now focus more on drug dealers than rapists, child molesters and those possessing child porn. Why? Because we can only take money from drug dealers, not pedophiles.

Over the past 40 years of drug prohibition/war on drugs, my profession has become addicted to the $70 billion in tax dollars you give us every year. Even that is not enough, as Dr. Fraser pointed out so well.

When will we become as wise as our grandparents and repeal our prohibition?

Howard Wooldridge

Retired detective/officer

Drug policy specialist

Citizens Opposing Prohibition

Adamstown, Md.

[end]

Regarding Ronald Fraser's op-ed June 22:

The financial incentives created by civil asset forfeiture laws create a dangerous precedent. Police can confiscate cars, cash and homes without bothering to charge owners with a crime. Vague allegations of drug trafficking don't justify turning protectors of the peace into financial predators. The drug war threatens the integrity of a country founded on the concept of limited government.

Police searches on public transit, drug-sniffing dogs in schools and random drug testing have led to a loss of civil liberties while failing miserably at preventing drug use. Despite marijuana prohibition and perhaps because of forbidden fruit appeal, lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United States than any European country, a majority of which have decriminalized marijuana.

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NORML Louisiana will have its second Medical Cannabis Rally in Monroe on Saturday. The rally will be at Tsunami on Olive Street.

NORML is the acronym for the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws.

There will be guest speakers and live music. The event is for those age 18 and above and there is a $5 cover that will be donated to the cause.

The event will be from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Four bands will be at the event ready to entertain. Electric Sermon, Hunter and the 3D Glasses, The Navigator and Sixty Cycle will all be at the rally playing some coveted local tunes.

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Instead of relying on state laws to protect property owners, Louisiana law enforcement officers are using state and federal statutes to stack the law against them.

Law enforcement officers can seize your car, your cash or your boat if they merely suspect the property was involved in a crime - and they don't even have to prove it. In most cases, you must prove the property is innocent to get it back.

"Modern civil forfeiture exploded during the 1980s as governments at all levels stepped up the war on drugs, and Congress and the states created new incentives for the use of civil asset forfeiture - one of the worst abuses of property rights in our nation today," according to the Institute for Justice report Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture.

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BATON ROUGE - Second-conviction felony drug dealers should have that noted on their driver's licenses, a House committee said Tuesday.

The House Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee unanimously approved House Bill 139 by Rep. Rickey Hardy, D-Lafayette, after increasing the fee assessed on offenders from $10 to $25 to cover the cost of issuing a special license with "DRUG OFFENDER" in bright orange on the bottom. Similar licenses with "SEX OFFENDER" already are issued to people convicted of certain sex crimes.

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Inside the green neon sign, which is shaped like a marijuana leaf, is a red cross. The cross serves the fiction that most transactions in the store -- which is what it really is -- involve medicine.

The U.S. Justice Department recently announced that federal laws against marijuana would not be enforced for possession of marijuana that conforms to states' laws. In 2000, Colorado legalized medical marijuana. Since Justice's decision, the average age of the 400 persons a day seeking "prescriptions" at Colorado's multiplying medical marijuana dispensaries has fallen precipitously. Many new customers are college students.

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Civil liberties advocates have cheered a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the strip search of a 13-year-old student in search of prescription drugs was unconstitutional.

But school officials say it gives little guidance on how they can balance the interests of protecting students' privacy and keeping dangerous drugs out of the classroom.

"The decision is based on the level of dangerousness" of the suspected hidden drugs, said Francisco NegrA3n, general counsel for the National School Boards Association. "But it is not clear from the opinion what the level of dangerous might be. aE& There are a lot of unanswered questions."

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Marijuana arrests on campus are rising like smoke.

The LSU Police Department has made 38 drug arrests this semester, and a majority involved marijuana.

LSUPD spokesman Maj. Lawrence Rabalais said the number of marijuana arrests has significantly increased since the implementation of the Crime Interdiction Unit in 2008.

Formed in response to the murder of two University doctoral students in December 2007, the CIU is made up of four officers who patrol campus in plain clothing. Their goal is to stop and identify suspicious people, Rabalais said. Drug arrests nearly tripled between 2007 and 2008 - climbing from 56 to 152.

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Many of the most credible media outlets - from CNN's Ted Turner to CBS's Walter Cronkite, from the conservative Wall Street Journal to the liberal New York Times - have labeled America's War on Drugs an abject failure.

We stand by that assessment.

In opining on the Vietnam War, a critic offered that America was fighting an invisible enemy in an undeclared war backed by a silent majority. As with most wars of similar circumstance, an invisible enemy indicates no clear path for victory.

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Marijuana is bad.

On this most auspicious of days, the calls for legalizing marijuana reach their wheezing, coughing climax.

And year after year, these calls go unanswered for good reason.

As much as we want to think our parents are over-protective and paranoid, there's a reason they always told us not to smoke pot, and there's a reason pot is still illegal.

Marijuana smoke contains 20 times more ammonia and five times more hydrogen cyanide and nitrogen oxide than tobacco smoke, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

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No one has ever overdosed on marijuana In 2001, 331 people died from alcohol overdose, with 75,000 people having alcohol-related deaths, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It is impossible to know the number of deaths caused by marijuana, although most experts agree it is significantly lower than alcohol.

Students lose federal aid when convicted for possessing marijuana

In 1998, an amendment to the Higher Education Act withdrew financial aid from students convicted of any drug offense - including simple possession - before or during studies. Although the bill has been scaled back to include only those convicted while in school, a bill introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., seeks to repeal all penalties. More than 200,000 students have been denied aid by this provision, according to Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

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AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France - April 20th is a special day - a day when strangers will exchange a wink or a nod, casually addressing an issue that is taboo for the other 364 days of the year.

But we formulate our understanding of this issue and public sentiment through the prism of the media. And because of a combination of political and financial influences, that understanding has been blurred, rebuffed and stagnated.

The politicization of marijuana likely originated in the Southwest U.S., where targeting Mexicans - with whom marijuana was exclusively popular - was a good way of drumming up support. Epitomized in the 1929 film "Reefer Madness," lies and exaggerations led to excessively frightening views of the plant.

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Raise your hand if you remember Chicago in the early 1930s, at the height of alcohol Prohibition.

The early '30s saw mafia warfare at its highest, featuring all-time highs in black market profiteering and bootlegging what so many enjoy on a nightly basis today.

Alcohol was prohibited by the 18th Amendment, but for the next 16 years, alcohol sales thrived underground while violence and murder rates skyrocketed.

Prohibition was eventually repealed in 1933 by President Franklin Roosevelt at the height of the Great Depression.

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When Charles Lynch asked local officials for permission to sell an herbal medicine in the central California town of Morro Bay, they granted it to him - even though the medicine was marijuana.

That's because marijuana recommended by a doctor has been legal in California since 1996. A dozen other states have passed similar laws. Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and New Hampshire are among about ten states that have been debating similar measures.

So Charlie applied for a business license, and even called the Drug Enforcement Administration before opening his medical marijuana dispensary with a grand ribbon-cutting ceremony.

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BATON ROUGE - If drug dealers want to stay in business after being arrested more than once, they should have to let the world know what they are, says a Lafayette lawmaker who says he's tired of seeing drug deals and their effects in his neighborhood.

Rep. Rickey Hardy, D-Lafayette, has pre-filed HB11, that seeks to require second-offense drug dealers to carry special driver's licenses and put brightly colored license plates on their cars.

I'm pushing for it to be bright orange," said Hardy, who envisions that if dealers know they could face such a stigma, they might get out of the trade.

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It's hell being a celebrity, especially if you're young and find yourself at a party, where marijuana and cameras should never mix.

And it's not exactly heaven being sheriff of a county with escalating drug crimes and pressure to treat all offenders equally.

Thus it is that Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps and Sheriff Leon Lott of South Carolina's Richland County are being forced to treat seriously a crime that shouldn't be one.

As everyone knows by now, Phelps was photographed smoking from an Olympic-sized bong during a University of South Carolina party last November. As all fallen heroes must - by writ of the Pitchforks & Contrition Act - Phelps has apologized for behavior that was "regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment," and has promised never to be a lesser role model again.

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