Illegal Drugs

We are eating dinner with friends at a Charles Street pub. Several of us are drinking wine, another Coca Cola. One woman leaves to have a cigarette over at the bar. My husband orders a coffee. All in all, a thoroughly ordinary scene repeated millions of times all over America, nay, all over the world. Elsewhere in Baltimore, teen-agers are hawking and smoking blunts, thick marijuana cigarettes, while older addicts are smoking cocaine or injecting heroin. Alas, an ordinary scene repeated millions of times all over America, nay, all over the world.

Regarding Justin Fenton 's front-page article "Crime spike alarms Northeast neighborhoods" (May 3): How much longer will lawmakers ignore the obvious fact that selling illegal drugs is profitable as well as a major contributing factor to the crime problem in the areas where they are sold? Will any of them have the courage to admit that political correctness and rhetoric have permitted the devastation taking place in our city? Celeste Pushkin, Baltimore

Mayor says treatment is best Mayor Sheila Dixon yesterday declined to say whether she supports decriminalizing the use of illegal drugs after being asked three times about her views on the topic at a news conference. "Drug addiction is a health issue, and drug treatment and providing support services to families is so significant and key," she said in response to a question from a television reporter. "That is where you break the cycles." Police say that much of the city's violence is fueled by the drug trade in Baltimore, and some believe that decriminalizing drug use would drastically reduce killings and shootings because crews would no longer fight over territory and money.

Defensive lineman-linebacker Fearon Wright and running back-defensive back Isaiah Grier, who play for the American Indoor Football Association's Baltimore Mariners, will be featured on today's episode of "The Steve Wilkos Show," which airs at noon on Channel 54. The players appear on the show in an effort to help Baltimore's Michelle Gordon, who fears she is losing her 15-year-old twin sons, Michael and Shaheim, to the streets. Michael once dreamed of a football career and Shaheim aspired to become a lawyer, but the two have gotten involved in gangs, violence and illegal drugs.

WASHINGTON -- Fewer teenagers are abusing illegal drugs, although the rate of illicit drug use among all Americans has remained steady over the past three years, according to a government report released yesterday. The proportion of youths ages 12 to 17 reporting that they had used illegal drugs - a category that includes marijuana and cocaine, but not alcohol or tobacco - in the previous month decreased by about 370,000, from 11.6 percent to a little less than 10 percent, between 2002 and 2005, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed.

A man convicted in the 1986 traffic death of a Baltimore police officer is asking the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to grant him a new trial, saying he was too addled by illegal drugs to have committed a first-degree murder.The crux of the argument is that Leonard P. Cirincione was to too high to have willfully killed Officer Richard Miller.At least three psychiatrists would have testified at the 1987 trial that Cirincione was "severely intoxicated on PCP at the time of the offense," but they were never called as witnesses, said Cirincione's lawyer, Larry A. Nathans.

Who's hot Mike Williams of the Pirates has earned 30 saves in 32 opportunities. Who's not Ryan Dempster, in three starts for the Reds, is 0-3 and has given up 20 hits and 16 runs in 12 innings. Line of the day Jacque Jones, Twins LF AB R H RBI HR 6 2 5 2 1 He said it "We have much bigger problems to deal with than whether or not home runs are being achieved illegally." A Drug Enforcement Administration agent, on the likelihood of investigating baseball players for steroids and other illegal drugs On deck The Angels, fresh off their sweep of the Mariners, take on the A's, the AL West's other top contender, tonight.

WASHINGTON -- Struggling to limit the effect of recent ballot initiatives in California and Arizona that relax restrictions on the medical use of marijuana and other illegal drugs, federal officials say they plan to prosecute and strip prescription licenses from doctors who help supply such drugs even to seriously ill people.The officials said that after an intense and sometimes unwieldy debate over the past six weeks about how the federal government should respond to the new state laws, the Justice Department has decided against filing suit to try to block either of the measures in court.

The cost of manufacturing a kilo of cocaine in Colombia is $50, according to Dr. Gustavo de Greiff Restrepo, Colombia's attorney general.Once the drug hits markets in this country, that $50 investment can fetch about $5,000. The hefty profit is one major reason Dr. Restrepo thinks that illegal drugs are here to stay, and that winning any kind of ''war on drugs'' is a pipe dream. His thinking is shared by many of the other officials who gathered in Baltimore last week for an international drug-policy conference.

Mayor Schmoke has now gotten a grand jury of people who have no experience or expertise with illegal drugs to endorse his misguided notion of handing out heroin and cocaine to drug abusers.Considering the huge impact of the drug culture on our society, it's amazing how little even highly educated Americans know -- historically, sociologically and scientifically -- about cocaine and heroin. Like our mayor (and many fellow baby boomers), I too once held similar fuzzy thoughts about legalizing drugs.