Delaware

News

DOVER, Del. -- A task force studying issues surrounding marijuana legalization in Delaware is wrapping up its work, but it remains unclear whether there is enough support among state lawmakers to legalize recreational pot use.

A Rehoboth Beach couple - the wife a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, the husband a disabled veteran taking medication for schizophrenia - say Delaware State Police officers beat and used a stun gun on the husband after finding him giving his wife a sponge bath when the family home they were in was raided in a search for drugs in June 2014.

Advocates of legalizing marijuana should be pleased: Legalization has strong support in Delaware, a 2016 target for the movement.

Immigration lawyer and columnist Christine Flowers calls cannabis consumers the "lowest common denominator" in a recent piece. The truth is quite the opposite.

Letters

Your editorial on the drug war ("Drug war can't succeed without refocusing," May 17) was based on erroneous assumptions.

Forty years, $1 trillion and nothing to show for it. It's obvious the federal government's war on drugs has been, and continues to be, an abysmal failure. Martha Mendoza's article on May 14 hit the nail on the head.

Delaware's Legislature is about to consider Senate Bill 94, which supposedly is intended to protect patients who may benefit from the medical use of marijuana.

In these tough economic times I find it troubling that our federal government is still spending billions of taxpayer dollars incarcerating nonviolent offenders. This is all a result of “The War on Drugs.” Mandatory sentences were instituted, a bill was passed to revoke bail and 65 percent good-time credit was changed to 85 percent. In other words, more money was being spent to incarcerate the same type of criminals – nonviolent drug offenders.

Obviously, all levels of government in Delaware are seeking ways to increase revenue, which includes increased taxes on the already beleaguered middle class.

A recent front-page story said, "Police and city officials blame the spike in violence on a loose judicial system and entrenched social problems, such as unemployment, school dropouts and drug abuse."

As a police officer who worked the trenches of the drug war spanning three decades, I heartily agree with views of Edmund Carpenter ("Deadly war against drugs isn't worth the human cost," Dec. 14).

A reader critical of a recent News Journal editorial recommending abolishment of Delaware's mandatory minimum drug laws responded by proclaiming that such statutes apply only to predatory drug dealers.

Opinions

Pre-dawn police raids on suspected drug houses make for dramatic television. Too often in real life, however, these SWAT-like raids turn out to be mistakes, or, to put it more diplomatically, not exactly what the police had in mind.

Heroin is killing people. It is destroying families and ruining lives. It is making criminals out of young people, and it is terrorizing whole neighborhoods.

The heroin problem has officially reached epidemic proportions. In the state of Delaware and in many other areas throughout the country, heroin has become one of the most widely abused and certainly one of the most devastating illegal substances. Today, heroin is cheaper, purer and more addictive than ever.

One of the more generous community resources available to Delaware families is a program directed at elementary school children about "safe touching."

Papers