Illegal Drugs

ATLANTA -- All wars have a way of creating collateral damage, as the desk-bound bureaucrats euphemistically call the dead innocents, destroyed buildings and decimated towns that just happen to be in the way of bombs and bullets. Kathryn Johnston was collateral damage in America's misguided "war on drugs." On Nov. 21, the 88-year-old woman was shot dead by Atlanta undercover police officers who crashed through her door after dark to execute a "no-knock" search warrant for 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.

Around the world, millions of people are exposed to a real health threat every day - the danger of taking the wrong medication. This spreading problem has nothing to do with patients mixing up their pills. Rather, it's caused by the proliferation of counterfeit drug traffickers, who are profiting immensely from selling fake medicines. To combat this threat, the FDA requires distributors to keep detailed records of the sources of the medications they dispense. But that's a futile undertaking.

ATLANTA -- Just once, I'd like to see a corporate executive whose company has knowingly hired illegal immigrants doing the perp walk for his offenses - handcuffed, disgraced, chaperoned by law enforcement officials as cameras record his every tentative step. For just a few days, I'd like to see the conservative blogosphere roasting the textile mill managers and onion field owners who routinely make a mockery of immigration law with a wink and a nod at forged documents. But that's not the way politics works, is it?

In a bid to show that unofficial rules in the Baltimore Police Department allowed officers to pay off informants with seized illegal drugs, two officers attempted yesterday to force former police Commissioner Edward T. Norris to testify at their corruption trial. The effort failed, however, when the presiding judge ruled that Norris, a convicted felon, would not back up the detectives' claims that they had been instructed to bend regulations and, in the eyes of prosecutors, to break the law. The defense team's unsuccessful move to have Norris testify came as one of several setbacks for detectives William A. King and Antonio L. Murray on the final day of testimony at their joint trial in U.S. District Court.

Baltimore's police commissioner has replaced the commander in the Southwestern District and will send him to the property division a month after officers in a specialized unit were accused of raping a woman in the station house and illegal drugs and other prohibited items were found in their offices. Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm has also reinstituted an "inspections unit" that will monitor each district's compliance with departmental regulations and act separately from Internal Affairs, a police spokesman said.

Saying abuse of such painkillers as OxyContin and Vicodin has become a problem as big as heroin and cocaine, Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. unveiled a set of proposals yesterday designed to attack the illegal trade in prescription drugs. Curran said he will press the General Assembly to enact an electronic prescription drug monitoring program, strengthen laws prohibiting illegal trafficking in the medications, regulate unlicensed pharmacy technicians, create education campaigns and increase training for law enforcement in how to deal with the problem.

The steroid that Rafael Palmeiro allegedly took is a powerful drug, experts say, one not likely to be ingested unwittingly. The drug, stanozolol (sta-NOZ-ah-lol), is an anabolic steroid that has been used for decades. "It's potent. It's up there in the major leagues of anabolic steroids," said Dr. Gary Wadler of New York University, a leading expert on steroid use. Steroid experts said it was unlikely that Palmeiro had accidentally taken stanozolol. "It's virtually impossible to imagine how someone could have taken stanozolol without knowing it," Wadler said.

A federal jury cleared a Baltimore police sergeant yesterday of all charges that he illegally provided the leader of one of the city's largest and more violent drug organizations with confidential information needed to evade capture. Jurors broke through three days of deadlocked negotiations to acquit Sgt. Jeremiah Kelly of drug conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges. The not-guilty verdict for Kelly is a blow for prosecutors, who had won 29 convictions against members and associates of a $50 million marijuana distribution operation run by Tyree Stewart.

The Baltimore man who prosecutors say served as the eyes and ears for two city police officers charged with dealing drugs pleaded not guilty to federal charges in a court hearing this week and was released by a magistrate. Court documents filed in the case say that Antonio Mosby, 39, was ordered to refrain from using alcohol or illegal drugs and must obtain a medical evaluation to test for withdrawal symptoms from heroin. Release conditions also include Mosby's entering an "inpatient drug treatment program and any necessary residential aftercare as approved in advance by pretrial services."