When someone dies, it's common for loved ones to shake a fist at whatever deity they believe in and ask "why?" In the U.S. of A., it's almost as common to look for someone to blame. And then file a lawsuit. Any death of a vibrant young person is a tragedy. When it's absolutely avoidable, such as a drug overdose, even more so.

But barring gross negligence, it adds insult to injury to expect others to take responsibility for a death an autopsy report attributes to an overdose of illegal hallucinogenics - especially those who tried to save her life.

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State Among 10 Defendants Named in Wrongful Death Complaint

SANTA FE - Just shy of the second anniversary of the death of Hannah Bruch, a 14-year-old Santa Fe girl who died after ingesting a hallucinogenic drug while attending a rave concert at Expo New Mexico, a lawsuit alleging negligence was filed against 10 defendants in Santa Fe District Court on Monday.

In the wrongful death complaint filed by a representative of Hannah Bruch's estate, the defendants are listed as the state of New Mexico, three companies that co-promoted the event, two security companies, an ambulance company, a hospital, and two paramedics who provided emergency medical care at the show.

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Editor,

The Rio Rancho Public Schools Board of Education needs to educate itself on the downside of student drug testing. Student involvement in after-school activities, like sports, has been shown to reduce drug use. They keep kids busy during the hours they are most likely to get into trouble. Forcing students to undergo degrading urine tests as a prerequisite will only discourage participation in extracurricular programs.

Drug testing may compel marijuana users to switch to more dangerous prescription narcotics to avoid testing positive. This is one of the reasons the American Academy of Pediatrics opposes student drug testing. Despite a short-lived high, marijuana is the only drug that stays in the human body long enough to make urinalysis a deterrent.

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SO LET ME get this right, Gov. (Susana) Martinez intends to "out" producers and employees of a legitimate business in the name of transparency. I understand she is getting pressure to release the names of the producers. I get that. I get that it's important to prevent cronyism.

What I don't get is why Gov. Martinez is dragging the employees of a Licensed Non-Profit Producers into her political ping pong game. I have a close relative that works for an LNPP. Their workplace has a very sophisticated alarm system. My relative keeps a panic button on their person at all times. Not only that, but the regulations forbid the employees from carrying a firearm for protection! Believe me, a business would not spend money on this type of security if they did not need it.

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I AM 88 years old and have never used marijuana or other illegal drugs.

I think revealing the names of owners and employees who produce medical marijuana will expose them to danger - possible theft, possible death. Gov. (Susana) Martinez will be responsible for any wrongdoing that will result. It is wrong to reveal their names.

Albuquerque

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New Mexico has a nasty habit of landing at or near the top of the list of states with the highest drug overdose death rates, and the state Health Department isn't making any headway toward reversing that trend. Despite some recent efforts to lower that statistic, our state still has the second-highest number of per capita overdoses in the nation.

While the department has made progress in defining the problem and identifying what should work, the numbers are not dropping consistently. In fact, overdose deaths hit an all-time high last year.

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Regulations May Result From Enquiry

SANTA FE - An explosion at a Santa Fe medical marijuana dispensary that severely burned two employees is being investigated by federal Drug Enforcement Administration and multiple city and state agencies.

Nicholas Montoya, 29, and Aaron Smith, believed to be 28, were severely burned while using butane and propane in a process to extract THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, from cannabis around 4:40 p.m. on Thursday at NewMexiCann Natural Medicine, one of the state's licensed medical pot producers. A process using butane and boiling over heat is widely used to produce concentrated hash oil.

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Painkillers Fuel 19% Increase in 2014

More New Mexicans died last year of drug overdoses than in any other year on record. The 536 deaths in 2014 mark a 19 percent increase over the year before, following a two-year decline, according to the state Department of Health.

That number shows the state needs to step up efforts to curb addiction, including better monitoring of prescription painkillers, according to state Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Landen.

He said New Mexico also needs to expand the use of naloxone, a prescription drug that can counteract a drug overdose, by making it more widely available to law enforcement officers and the public. Far more New Mexicans could have died last year without naxalone, which was used successfully in over 900 cases.

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The United States does not have a justice system.

If we define a justice system as a system designed for the production of justice, then it seems obvious that term cannot reasonably be applied to a system that countenances the mass incarceration by race and class of hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders.

Any system that vacuums in one out of every three African-American males while letting a banker who launders money for terrorist-connected organizations, Mexican drug cartels and Russian mobsters off with a fine is not a justice system.

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We applaud the Rio Rancho Public Schools Board of Education for adopting the area's first random drug-testing policy for student athletes.

Hopefully, it will go a long way toward making a student who elects to go out for a sports team think twice about using alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, opiates and other substances the contractor selected to handle the program will test for.

We are disappointed, though, that the program will omit steroid tests. While district policy prohibits steroid use, the board was informed that testing for them would be too costly to include in the program.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Suiting up will now come with the possibility of a random drug test for athletes in the Rio Rancho school district.

The school board on Monday unanimously passed a policy that will allow for the random drug testing of students in grades eight through 12 who are playing on a district sports team.

Rio Rancho Public Schools is the first public school district in the metro area to drug test its athletes. District officials will inform parents of the policy during the annual mandatory meeting Cleveland and Rio Rancho high schools hold for the parents of all athletes at the beginning of each school year.

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When a state regulation has no compelling reason to exist - especially one that shrouds an important state function in secrecy - it takes decisive leadership to get it off the books.

Gov. Susana Martinez's decision to direct the New Mexico Health Department to dump a provision in the state's Medical Cannabis Program that kept the names of licensed medical marijuana producers secret is a perfect example of logic - and transparency - prevailing over furtive regulation.

Ever since New Mexico approved its medical marijuana program in 2007, regulations have kept the names of licensed pot growers, dispensaries and their employees confidential. Although proponents of such secrecy claimed that making that information public would prove detrimental - for reasons ranging from federal prosecution of growers to security of production locations - no such problems have arisen. The federal government has not intervened in state-sanctioned programs, and information on dispensary locations has always been relatively easy to find. Dispensaries advertise their businesses.

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Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's most recent prison escape is a tremendous blow not only for Mexican authorities but also for the U.S. government.

One of the world's most notorious criminals escaped last week from one of Mexico's most secure prisons in a rather conventional fashion: by digging a tunnel. This is not El Chapo's first escape. In 2001 he escaped from another Mexican maximum security prison, reportedly by sneaking out in a laundry cart.

The Mexican government's failure to keep one of the world's most dangerous criminals behind bars is astonishing.

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Martinez Directs Change, Says Confidentiality No Longer Needed

SANTA FE - The names of New Mexico medical marijuana dispensaries and their employees will soon be made public, under a directive announced Wednesday by the office of Gov. Susana Martinez.

The Republican governor's decision will reverse a long-standing confidentiality provision in the state's Medical Cannabis Program and comes less than a week after a lawsuit was filed in an attempt to strike down the regulation that allows for the names of medical marijuana producers to be kept secret.

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Heroin use and fatal overdoses are on the rise across the U.S., especially among young adults and poor people, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in a report released this week. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, where drug overdoses have been a chronic problem, preliminary data indicate that after a two-year reprieve, overdose deaths spiked in 2014.

The CDC analyzed vital statistics and results of a national survey on health and drug use to conclude that heroin-related overdose deaths across the country surged by a startling 286 percent between 2002 and 2013. At the same time, heroin use has been the rise among most demographic groups, with use of the drug among adults ages 18 to 25 more than doubling.

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Among its benefits, medical pot smokers claim that it shuts down various pains and opens the senses. And it's only right that the state should be open about those it licenses to grow and sell medical marijuana.

A lawsuit filed last week accuses the state Department of Health of violating state law by refusing to release the names or other information about people who have applied for a license to produce medical marijuana. Among the allegations: refusal to make the information public "distorts the market for medicine" and deprives residents of "information about their neighborhoods, and has the potential to promote cronyism and corruption in the awarding of valuable state licenses."

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Prisons Haven't Prepared Them for a Better Life

Seems like Washington is enjoying a rare political kumbayah moment these days. Both Democrats and Republicans now agree that our justice system ran off the rails with overly burdensome, mandatory sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders.

Convicts like Antwon Rogers of Cleveland, Ohio, who was sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine - less than 5 ounces of the drug. But because Rogers had two previous drug convictions, the mandatory federal three-strikes law kicked in, and at the age of 22, he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. He's been there more than 20 years.

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A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses the New Mexico Health Department of violating state law by refusing to release the names of people with a license to produce medical marijuana.

Freelance journalist Peter St. Cyr and the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government filed a complaint Thursday asking a judge to strike down a state regulation that aims to keep secret the names of people or groups who have applied for or received licenses to produce medical marijuana.

The secrecy "distorts the market for medicine, deprives New Mexicans of important information about their neighborhoods, and has the potential to promote cronyism and corruption in the awarding of valuable state licenses," the lawsuit says.

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SANTA FE - The New Mexico Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of an injured worker in a medical marijuana case.

The recent decision marks the third time in a year the court has sided with a medical marijuana patient in a workers' compensation claim.

According to the ruling issued in late June, a patient in the medical marijuana program who is injured on the job must be reimbursed by an employer for the expense of marijuana used for treatment.

Appellate Judge James Wechsler wrote that a workers' compensation judge was correct in ruling that American General Media, which owns several radio stations in New Mexico, had to reimburse Sandra Lewis of Albuquerque.

The company had argued that the state's medical marijuana law created a conflict with federal law.

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FARMINGTON - A state law intended to prevent police from seizing money or assets from people unless they're convicted of a crime took effect this month, and law enforcement officials say it's going to cut deeply into their budgets.

Before House Bill 560 became law, most police departments and other local law enforcement agencies in New Mexico could auction items they had seized and use the revenue to pay for training or equipment. That process funds a fourth of the Region II Narcotics Task Force's operational finances each year - which was approximately $100,000, according to its director, Sgt. Kyle Dowdy.

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