THIBODAUX -- There was never any intent to break the law, Matthew Zugsberger says.

Louisiana does not make the same allowances for medical marijuana use as his home state of California. But the former oilfield diver was certain his privilege of possession would be honored here.

That was until Friday, when a team of state troopers, aided by Thibodaux police, raided his St. Bernard Road apartment, allegedly seizing a little over two pounds of marijuana, some hashish oil and $4,640 in cash.

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Periodically, a letter shows up in the programs office at Caddo Correctional Center declaring the jail's substance abuse treatment programs changed someone's life. A former prisoner is living clean and sober.

Other times, letters come from other Louisiana prisons asking for help. There, the prisoner doesn't have access to treatment programs but realizes he or she needs it.

About 80 percent of the inmates in Louisiana prisons have a substance abuse problem that contributed to their crimes: it could be possession of a large quantity, theft in order to buy more or sometimes violent crime.

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DA Drops Charges in 37 Prosecutions

As a member of the New Orleans Police Department's 4th District task force, officer Joseph Lusk was involved in a plethora of Algiers drug busts, arresting people for dealing or using illegal drugs.

Lusk's own arrest last month on suspicion of malfeasance in office means 37 of those cases have been dropped so far by the Orleans Parish district attorney's office -- whose prosecutors can't press forward on cases with an allegedly corrupt cop as a main witness.

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Ostensibly color-blind, the U.S. "war on drugs" disproportionately targets urban minority neighborhoods, Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project said in two reports released May 5. Although whites commit more drug offenses, African Americans are arrested and imprisoned on drug charges at much higher rates, the reports find.

In the 67-page report, "Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States" (hrw.org/reports/2008/us0508/), Watch documents with detailed new statistics persistent racial disparities among drug offenders sent to prison in 34 states. All of these states send Black drug offenders to prison at much higher rates than whites.

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A Pineville Police DARE officer and Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office corrections officer were arrested after the DARE officer reportedly made a drug deal with a police informant while on duty Wednesday afternoon at Lessie Moore Elementary School in Pineville, officials said today.

The correction officer's connection to the deal and operation wasn't released as the investigation is ongoing.

Much of the undercover drug deal involving the Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office Metro Narcotics Division was somehow broadcast over the police scanner, although sheriff's officials still aren't sure how.

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Power and greed go together like hand and glove. People who become rich do not stay rich unless they establish a foundation of power. Those who gain power solidify that power through the lust for wealth. There have been a few common folk come to the White House but none have ever left without being wealthy and powerful. It goes together because "He, who has the gold, makes the rules".

As the world evolved into one big theater, many nations, empires and super tribes began to convert their power that was gained through military prowess into a political format via vehicles of exploitation. A violent nation or empire would control its conquered subjects via front governments and psychological techniques.

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NEW ORLEANS -- Cedric Allen once wrestled with his crack addiction in an apartment he shared with his fiancee or in a home surrounded by his four grown daughters.

Today, Allen, 48, struggles with the same addiction alone in a camping tent under an interstate overpass in downtown New Orleans. His daughters and fiancee are gone, displaced by Hurricane Katrina. His old apartment is unaffordable.

Allen is one of an estimated 12,000 people who are homeless in New Orleans, many of whom landed on the streets after Katrina. Homeless people account for 4% of the city's overall population -- more than four times that of most cities.

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Americans have forgotten about the other war that this country is fighting. It is not the war in Afghanistan. It is the "War on Drugs."

An estimated $19 BILLION is budgeted for this fiscal year, while it is estimated that drugs have tied up our legal system and law enforcement agencies to the tune of $50 BILLION.

More than 1 million people are currently incarcerated in connection with nonviolent drug offenses. That is around 60 percent of the prison population. When President Nixon started this unwinnable battle in 1972, there were 285,750 drug offenders in prison. The estimated cost of housing a prisoner for a year stands around $30,000. There are currently more illegal substances in the United States than ever, and there is no end in sight.

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The time has come to relax our laws on marijuana use and possession.

Admitting one's past use of marijuana is trendy in modern America. It's even a little presidential.

Barack Obama smoked his fair share of cannabis. John Kennedy, Howard Dean and John Kerry all owned up to the dirty deed as well.

But it's more than just politicians. According to a recent article in The New Yorker, 40 million American adults have used pot. That's 40 percent of adults.

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Many States Have Similar Statutes

In January, a batch of marijuana-laced Rice Krispie Treats cost a Tennessee man, William Hoak, $11,506 because his items were not decorated with a Tennessee illegal drug tax stamp.

Illegal drug tax laws are challenged on constitutionality because many people do not understand how an illegal substance can be taxed.

Most states have adopted the illegal drug tax, Arizona being the first in 1983. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer outlined his plan this past month to adopt the illegal drug tax, according to The New York Times. This will make New York the 30th state to acquire the tax.

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Prescription Abuses Probed

Drug Enforcement Administration agents searched a chain of pain management clinics in Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes Tuesday that law enforcement officials and the state's medical board said had been selling prescriptions for addictive opiates.

Federal agents and local law enforcement swarmed over Global Care clinics in Covington and Metairie on Tuesday morning and interviewed the doctor operating a third office for the firm in Harvey. By the afternoon they had collected surrendered licenses for prescribing controlled substances from three doctors, none of whom specializes in pain management, and took boxes and filing cabinets of medical and financial records.

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Release Without Bond at Center of Legal Action

A district judge today will hear a suit filed by City Marshal Nickey Picard that seeks to stop the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office from releasing without bonds those misdemeanor offenders who are charged under state statutes, such as operating while intoxicated and possession of marijuana.

Picard filed the suit after it became clear that the Sheriff's Office would continue its new population management policy despite a recent Louisiana attorney general's opinion that seems to question the practice.

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Re: "Drug conference attendees see bleak picture," Page 1, Dec. 9.

Sunday's article quoted a Florida police official who described his frustration with the "revolving door" of drug arrests.

"We were going to the same houses, arresting the same people, getting the same results," he said. "We cannot arrest our way out of the problem."

He is correct that arrests alone will not reverse the prevalence of illegal drugs. That will happen only when we eliminate the drug marketplaces.

Under the leadership of the late Mayor Louis Tallo and Assistant Chief Kenny Corkern, the city of Hammond in 2002 virtually eliminated the sale of crack cocaine within city limits.

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As one who has written extensively on disparities in the criminal justice system, I am familiar with assorted statistics associated with selective prosecution. On Tuesday, the Justice Policy Institute released a comprehensive study on the issues of race, poverty, unemployment and selective prosecution within the context of the so-called war on drugs.

The report's conclusion was blunt: "The drug war is primarily being waged against African American citizens of our local jurisdictions, despite solid evidence that they are no more likely than their white counterparts to be engaged in drug use or drug delivery behaviors."

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This week, more than 1,000 people will gather for the 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans. There could not be a better venue for us to discuss how the drug war has become a war against black Americans.

Louisiana's rate of incarceration for nonviolent drug-law violations is among the highest in the nation. But all over America, including states like New York, drug-war arrests, convictions and imprisonment have increased dramatically, and are disproportionately targeted against African-Americans, making this a major, though largely unrecognized, civil rights issue.

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Most Policies Don't Work, Speakers Say

A man wearing a pot-leaf emblem sat next to a former judge, not far from a former cop, a short hop from a lawyer.

All were listening intently to the discussion, taking notes and sipping coffee.

Attendees at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in the French Quarter this past week represented the whole spectrum of opinions: crime fighters and former inmates, legalization advocates and opponents, casual users and part-time abusers.

As the conference, which ended Saturday, dissected the country's drug culture, no topic or approach was taboo.

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U.S. Attorney's Office Delivers Hard Sell to Churches, Schools

The roll call kicks off with the bass drum of a funeral dirge.

Slowly, methodically, the names of each young person slain last year creeps across the projection screen. People shift in their seats, swallow lumps in their throats.

Federal prosecutors Richard Rose and Abram McGull II want it that way.

"We are trying to get into one young mind at a time," Rose said.

Their venture, "Street Smarts NOLA" is a progressive new crime prevention program aimed at city teenagers. The program prompts students to think, to react, to question.

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The beating death of hairdresser Robin Malta is a perfect illustration of the folly of our drug laws. Mr. Malta allegedly was killed over a debt, by someone who had no lawful way to collect.

For other kinds of business transactions, we provide a forum for dispute resolution: the civil courts, where a creditor can sue a deadbeat debtor. For drug transactions, that option is not available. Drug debts must be collected privately, and violence is the predictable outcome. If the woman accused in his murder had been able to sue Mr. Malta, he might be alive today.

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BOGALUSA - Officials from a Baton Rouge-based company have been in the city recently, but the DARE funds they are raising may not be getting back to local programs.

Charlie Thames is affiliated with SMG and is based in Baton Rouge. His company is a fund-raising organization and recently had people working in Bogalusa on behalf of DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education).

The only problem is that for every dollar someone "donates" to DARE through Thames' firm, only about a nickel makes it to the organization.

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As a Christian, I strongly disagree with Arden A. Anderson's assertions (column on Marijuana Should Be A Wake-Up Call, Oct. 28), about the relatively safe, God-given plant cannabis (kaneh bosm/marijuana). Cannabis persecution, prohibition and extermination is luciferous and Biblically incorrect to begin with since Christ, God,Our Father, the Ecologician, indicates he created all the seed-bearing plants, saying they are all good, on literally the very first page (see Genesis 1:11-12 and 29-30). The only biblical restriction placed on cannabis is that it is to be accepted with thankfulness (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5).

It's time to stop caging responsible adult humans for using what God says is good.

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

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