News

PUERTO CACHICAMO, Colombia-The pandemic closed the only school in this remote hamlet, long a stronghold for Marxist guerrillas. With no internet connection for virtual classes, 16-year-old Danna Montilla told her family she was leaving to find work, but instead authorities say she joined a narco-trafficking rebel group.

Teenagers are more likely than young adults to become addicted to marijuana or prescription drugs within a year after trying them for the first time, according to a new study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

PHOENIX - When Arizonans voted to legalize recreational cannabis in November, it seemed plausible that sales would begin sometime in the spring.

After years of stalled attempts, New York State has legalized the use of recreational marijuana, enacting a robust program that will reinvest millions of dollars of tax revenues from cannabis in minority communities ravaged by the decades-long war on drugs.

Opinions

Letters

Mr. Fallon's letter highlights one of the unappreciated strengths of our federal republic when compared with most other countries:

It's disingenuous of Seamus R. Fallon ("Oregon Drug Law Change Can Help Families," Letters, Nov. 24) to insist that two grams of cocaine is one-third the amount a drug dealer would typically carry. What is the source for such a statement? Based on my experience as a high-school teacher, few of the drug users in their teen years are "drug dealers." They are constant consumers, many on a daily basis, of stimulants of any kind. Two grams of cocaine is easily quartered for four classmates to afford a half-gram each, plenty to get amped up, behind some brewskis, especially for diminutive teen girls. None of the group is "a dealer" in the sense Mr. Fallon proffers his straw man; they are end-users for the dealers.

Naomi Schaefer Riley and John Walters state that Oregon decriminalized "small amounts of harder drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine" ("Legal Drugs Are Fashionable-and Treacherous for Children," op-ed, Nov. 19) and that the passage of Measure 110 in Oregon "lower[s] the risk and cost of doing business for drug dealers." It's an erroneous claim. Measure 110 says that possession of less than one gram of heroin, various low amounts of amphetamines and less than two grams of cocaine is decriminalized. No drug dealer would carry anything less than three times the amounts in the measure.

The drug war needs to end. If the AJC investigated, it would likely find most of the violence is drug war-related. The police are doing the job they were given. You may not like the way they do it, but do not blame them for doing their highly dangerous job. Either make drugs legal, or let the government compete with the drug lords by taking confiscated drugs and giving them free to drug addicts in a special recovery program. If drugs are free or legal, there is no reason for drug lords to exist. They cannot compete with free. This is the way to end most of the violence and social injustice. Not all of it, I am sorry to say, but it would be a start.

Re "Parents' Little Helpers" (Sunday Styles, Oct. 4): To be a Black mother is to be in a constant state of alertness when it comes to protecting your family from the government. As a Black woman, mother and lawyer, I am no different in that regard.

Like myself, I suspect many citizens of Lethbridge were alarmed by the finding of misappropriated funds within ARCHES, and the subsequent withdrawal of provincial funding to their supervised consumption site (SCS). As an RN who has worked for a number of years in harm reduction, I am reeling for our clients and their families in terms of how this will impact them.

Give Marijuana Tax Revenues to the Harmed We have a moral imperative to try to right the wrongs of the war on drugs. We should start by investing in the very communities it harmed.