It's a messed-up message. By refusing last week to legalize medical marijuana, the Illinois House said this: Drug dealers and gangs win. Taxpayers lose. The response to a recent column about the legalization of pot has me more convinced than ever the time has come to end a costly, dangerous and ineffective prohibition. But don't take my word for it. Maybe you can imagine my surprise when Iowa 7th District Senior Associate Judge Douglas McDonald, of Bettendorf, wrote to say he also hopes to see cases of pot possession "de-emphasized or legalized." [continues 880 words]
If pot is so bad for people, how are so many outstanding athletes able to smoke it? The Iowa Hawkeyes' Derrell Johnson-Koulianos (DJK) finished the regular season with 46 receptions for 745 yards and 10 touchdowns, making him Iowa's career leader in receptions and receiving yards. He admitted earlier this month that he smokes pot. Hawkeye running back Adam Robinson was busted over the weekend for pot possession. If marijuana is so dangerous, why aren't these men collapsing on the field, rather than breaking records? And why is Willie Nelson alive? [continues 570 words]
If you found out one of your best friends was selling marijuana, would it change your opinion of your friend or the marijuana? It sounds like some people in little Wilton, Iowa, are struggling with the news that their mayor, Dick Summy, has been arrested and charged with trafficking marijuana. It's a pretty serious deal for the 56-year-old. Trafficking is a Class C felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Violating the state's tax-stamp law is a Class D felony and carries a maximum sentence of five years. And Sean McCullough, a supervisor for the Iowa Department of Public Safety's Narcotics Enforcement Division, said Monday that more charges could be coming. [continues 437 words]
EM Men Victims Of New High-Grade Street Product Within six minutes of the time Robert Watson and Jeffrey Davis shared a needle of heroin, both men were dying on the floor of an East Moline home. The simultaneous deaths of the two men alarmed and puzzled authorities who suspected the men may have been using a tainted street drug. But toxicology tests now show the culprit was an unusually potent batch of heroin, which appears to be driving up the death rate nationally among veteran drug users, according to Rock Island County coroner Sharon Anderson. [continues 385 words]
East Moline police said they will continue today to try to unravel the mystery surrounding the sudden and simultaneous deaths of two men Wednesday in an East Moline home. The men have been identified as Robert "Pap" Watson, 62, of Brookport, Ill., which is on the Illinois-Kentucky border, and Jeffry Davis, 43, of Aurora, Colo. Both men previously have lived in the Quad-City area and were visiting members of Watson's family, police said. People living at the East Moline home declined comment when contacted Thursday by the Quad-City Times. [continues 385 words]
What do we want with a few thousand drunken, pot-smoking skydivers dropping from the sky above Davenport? The tourism people want their money. The city could use their business. But the airport people say the thrill-seekers should take their party elsewhere. The World Free Fall Convention, or WFFC, evidently has gained a reputation in its former home in Quincy, Ill., as more of a Free-For-All Convention. Quincy police and city officials have painted a picture of a pack of rowdy, drug and alcohol abusers who cause nothing but trouble and leave the airport in a shambles. [continues 574 words]
Your teen-ager and his friends come home with a drug pipe they bought at the gas station down the street. What do you do? A Davenport reader called last week to tell me how bitterly unhappy she was to find a pot pipe on a friend of her 13-year-old son. She became even more upset when she learned how the teens came to have it. Her son's explanation about the drug paraphernalia being sold off gas station countertops sounded so suspicious, the woman checked it out for herself. [continues 563 words]
