A Fort Smith husband and wife who authorities said took their 1-year-old child with them as they stole prescription drugs and jewelry from Sebastian County residents were arrested Wednesday on various theft complaints.

A Fort Smith husband and wife who authorities said took their 1-year-old child with them as they stole prescription drugs and jewelry from Sebastian County residents were arrested Wednesday on various theft complaints.

Rep. Loy Mauch

By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — A bill filed today by a freshman state legislator seeks disclosure of additives in public drinking water, including mood-altering drugs.

Rep. Loy Mauch, R-Bismarck, filed House Bill 1205, which would require the operators of public water systems to disclose information about any chemicals additives in drinking water, including their chemical composition.

The bill states that such regulation is necessary in part because “public policy discussions of the prospects of adding lithium to the public water to alter human mood imbalances, and statin drugs to affect human cholesterol … have increased.”

The legislation also states it is in response to “water operators initiating the use of, halting the use of, and making changes in the use of fluoridation products.”

“We want accountability and transparency in what they’re putting in our public water,” Mauch said today.

State Department of Health spokesman Ed Barham said he was not aware of any discussions about adding lithium or statin drugs to drinking water in Arkansas.

Mauch said he heard about the discussions from the conservative group Secure Arkansas, which asked him to file the bill. Secure Arkansas Chairman Jeannie Burlsworth said the idea has been discussed in a British psychiatric journal.

“It might be good to be a little pre-emptive,” she said.

LITTLE ROCK – A bill that would tax users, possessors and traffickers of illegal substances, even if they were not convicted by a court, failed to get approval from the House Committee on Revenue and Taxation on Tuesday.

The Department of Finance and Administration opposed House Bill 1422 by Rep. Denny Sumpter, D-West Memphis, which would tax marijuana at $3.50 per gram, tax controlled substances sold by weight other than marijuana at $200 per gram and tax drugs not typically sold by weight at $400 per 10 dosages or any fraction of 10 dosages.

Sumpter said the bill was modeled after legislation in Tennessee.

“Because they’ve levied this tax, they’ve gone out, been able to invest more resources in their local law enforcement and catch even more bad guys,” Sumpter said.

Alabama and Oklahoma also have similar laws.

Under the bill, after an alleged drug offender’s court appearance, DF&A would add the offender to the collection list and 75 percent of the tax collected would go to the law enforcement agency that conducted the investigation, Sumpter said.

“How many of these individuals are going to be able to pay this tax?” Rep. Scott Sullivan, D-De Queen, asked.

A lien would be placed against property, like any other tax liability, Sumpter said. “We’re not going to make a lot of money off the small guy,” Sumpter said. “What you’re going to make money from is where somebody bought a $500,000 home, and they’ve been trafficking drugs, and they’ve got that home sitting there and you’ll pay it with that property.”

Sumpter said he expected the state to garner at least $50,000 in taxes yearly from the bill, but a DF&A official said the state would not reap much of a benefit.

“I don’t think that you can count on a lot of money from this,” Deputy DF&A Director Tim Leathers told the committee.

Filing a lien is a costly process, and while Tennessee has benefited from the tax, many states don’t because they don’t enforce it as hard, Leathers said.

Arkansas DF&A officials become administrative officers when they collect taxes, not law enforcement officers, said John Theis, assistant state revenue commissioner. The department doesn’t enforce criminal law, he said.

Tennessee’s revenue office has 13 law enforcement officers with police authority responsible for collecting taxes on illegal drugs, Theis said.

“We don’t want that authority and I don’t think you want us to be law enforcement officials,” Leathers said. “And to have a big success in this, it’s probably what you’re going to have to do.”

Leathers alternatively recommended taxing illegal drugs locally.

The bill failed on a voice vote.

When I was in law school I served as a research assistant for a professor analyzing war as a Romantic impulse. His paper, eventually published in the Notre Dame Law Review, explored this in the context of George Fletcher’s theory of Romanticism and war.

I spent a fair of time one semester reading presidential speeches about the War on Drugs and the challenges facing the world from a growing heroin, cocaine and marijuana distribution network, which got me thinking about things well beyond the scope of that project.

In Arkansas, methamphetamine is destroying lives. Washington Co., Arkansas Circuit Judge Mary Ann Gunn oversees Arkansas’s first drug court and when I worked with her, in the summer of 2002, I saw the devastating effects that meth was having on people.

We’ve never been able to figure out this problem, although we’re trying. “The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars,” notes The Economist.

In its 03.05.09 issue, The Economist argues for the legislation of illegal drugs. Here’s their rationale:

“Reviewing the evidence again prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.”

The Obama administration appears headed in another direction. (Thumbs Up: Andrew Sullivan)

OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF A package that arrived at the United Parcel Service terminal aroused the suspicion of employees, and after police confirmed that the package contained drugs, the driver made the delivery, followed closely by police vice and narcotics officers.

Would you be surprised to learn that a large number of seniors at three Jefferson County school districts admitted last fall that they were frequent binge drinkers, came to classes intoxicated or high on drugs, and developed antisocial behavior that involved attacking others to cause harm?

A patient of Dr. Randeep Mann testified today that the physician gave her drugs such as morphine when he did not have a license to prescribe narcotics.
from Channel 7

A patient of Dr. Randeep Mann testified today that the physician gave her drugs such as morphine when he did not have a license to prescribe narcotics.
from Channel 7

A patient of Dr. Randeep Mann testified today that the physician gave her drugs such as morphine when he did not have a license to prescribe narcotics.
from Channel 7