Jeffco Deputies Find Haul In Trailer Of Beets

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Department seized 1,800 pounds of marijuana from a tractor trailer on Interstate 20, the second-largest marijuana bust in the agency's history.

The department's highway interdiction team on Sunday stopped the eastbound truck about 6 p.m. near Leeds, officials announced Monday.

Deputies found the marijuana - with an estimated street value of $3.5 million - hidden in a trailer load of beets being shipped from Texas. Advertisement

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Fort Payne Mayor Bill Jordan said he didn't want them in town. Members of a local church congregation said they didn't want them as neighbors. Police Chief David Walker says all he has heard about them is negative. And Sen. Lowell Barron said he didn't want them anywhere in northeast Alabama. But Fort Payne may be getting a methadone clinic, like it or not.

"It seems pretty certain that the state is going to let this go through no matter what the citizens of Fort Payne have to say about it," said Jordan.

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A Group Of Leaders In Fort Payne Are Telling The State They Don't Want Any

Fort Payne Mayor Bill Jordan, DeKalb County District Attorney Mike O'Dell, Fort Payne Police Chief David Walker, Stacy Neely with DeKalb County Court Referral and Sen. Lowell Barron, D-Fyffe met in Montgomery Wednesday to discuss a proposed methadone clinic coming to Fort Payne.

"Fort Payne is a town that is in need of a lot of things," said Jordan. "But a methadone clinic is just not one of those things. We don't want any methadone clinic in Fort Payne."

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Mobile County residents overwhelmingly believe that public school students, possibly as young as elementary and middle school-aged, should be tested for drug use, results of a new Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll suggest.

Ninety percent of respondents to the poll, which was conducted last week, said the Mobile County Public School System should institute a drug-testing program for its students.

The vast majority of respondents supported testing all students, as well as more limited programs that would test students at random, those who participate in extracurricular activities or students who are suspected of drug use.

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Former District Judge Ira Colvin faces drug charges.

CARROLLTON -- The trial of former Pickens County District Judge Ira Colvin, arrested last year on drug possession charges, is tentatively set for December.

Defense attorney Jim Standridge and William Dill of the Alabama Attorney General's Office met with Circuit Judge Scott Donaldson Tuesday in Carrollton for a status hearing. Colvin was not present. Donaldson set the trial date and said a pretrial hearing for motions would be scheduled.

Colvin resigned his judgeship in August after a Pickens County grand jury indicted him for methamphetamine possession. A search of his office allegedly produced a small amount of methamphetamine.

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A new drug testing policy will be in effect next school year at The Lakeside School.

Parents were notified about the new policy last month. All students in grades 6-12 will be tested at least once, though many students will be randomly tested at least once more during the school year. Teachers and board of trustee members will also be tested.

A parent meeting to discuss the new policy was held last Thursday evening.

"Our goal is to continue to keep this campus safe," board chairperson Janie King says.

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You can be opposed to the consumption of marijuana. Fine. But your own moral code aside, you must consider facts and hard evidence. The purposes of Jake DaSilva's recent column were very clear: to claim that pot is bad and should never be smoked by anyone. However, there was no real substance behind his anecdotal account of why drugs, moreover marijuana, are bad.

His basic assertion is that marijuana is bad and wreaks havoc in the lives of the users. He laments on the blight of sketchy drug dealers peddling their goods on impressionable young children and adults who consume marijuana.

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In response to the Jan. 20 article, "Drug and murder indictments dominate in January grand jury report," I offer the following.

The fact that 70 percent of the indictments are for drug offenses is astounding. How many of those offenses actually involved violence of depriving another person of life, liberty or pursuit of happiness?

Without the "drug war," the employees of the criminal justice system wouldn't have that much to do. This just goes to show that the drug war is nothing more than a government jobs program that creates the crime it claims to protect us from, while destroying our constitutional and civil rights in the process. It is an attempt to centralize power with local police officers who are loyal to the federal government and not the citizens they are sworn to serve and protect.

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The recent article, "Baldwin County to expand student drug tests," demonstrates the exemplary leadership and cooperation being exhibited by members of the Baldwin County School Board and the superintendent's office. The parents of Baldwin County schoolchildren also deserve credit for willingly recognizing and accepting the need to take strong action to reverse the several decades-long trend of increasing drug use by children.

National and local data clearly show that more than 30 percent of our kids openly admit to using illegal drugs. Our region of the country is a crossroads for drug trafficking and lots of the illegal contraband ends up on our streets and in our kids' pockets.

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The deaths of a 3-month-old boy by beating and shaking, a woman killed in a DUI-related car crash, the slayings of two women in domestic violence incidents and the strangulation of a 70-year-old man were among cases processed this month by the Mobile County grand jury.

In a relatively modest 47-page report, January grand jurors announced they considered 338 cases, and of those handed down 232 indictments -- 201 felonies and 31 misdemeanors.

Drug crimes accounted for 70 percent of the grand jury's docket, along with a smattering of cases such as resisting arrest; criminal mischief; dog fighting and cruelty to animals in a related incident; obstruction of justice; and impersonating a police officer.

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Even though District Judge O.L. "Pete" Johnson has retired, the Drug Court he founded in Jefferson County will continue to provide a treatment alternative to prison for nonviolent drug offenders.

Johnson's replacement will run the Drug Court, a nationally recognized program that boasts almost 2,300 graduates in 11 years.

"The court has been such a success that whoever replaces Judge Johnson will run the court," said Circuit Judge Scott Vowell, the presiding judge in Jefferson County. "It's done too much good and it's been too successful to let it go."

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Sophomore Josh Reeves arrived at Gulf Shores High on a routine morning and was quickly summoned to the office.

Once there, Reeves learned he must immediately provide a urine sample as part of the school's random drug-testing policy. Reeves -- a fullback on the Dolphins' football team and an infielder on the baseball team -- stepped into the restroom and returned to class minutes later.

"I like it because it keeps everybody straight," Reeves said of the testing procedure. "It really didn't matter to me. The kids that don't do drugs don't care about it, because they know they're not going to get into trouble. The kids that do do drugs, they don't like it because they will get in trouble."

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BAY MINETTE -- While thousands of Alabama public school students are tested for everything from alcohol to cocaine, there is no such testing program for teachers.

Only bus drivers in Baldwin and Mobile counties, along with the 129 public school systems in Alabama, are required to submit to random drug tests, according to local and state school officials.

Schools may require prospective employees to be drug-tested during the hiring process, but no school system has this requirement of new teachers, said Brooke Thorington, a state education department spokeswoman.

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