I just embraced him and cried all the time, saying that I would try to help him overcome this problem."Perhaps because I was working so much I didn't see this. It's sad that because of my intense campaign against drugs I could not see what was happening in my own house."Edinho said he experimented with drugs as a teenager but the situation got out of control when he stopped playing for Santos in 1999.The anti-narcotics police chief, Ivaney Caires de Souza, said there were indications Edinho was connected to Ronaldo Duarte Barsotti de Freitas, or Naldinho, who was also arrested and is accused of heading a drugs trafficking and money-laundering ring with links to the notorious Red Command and First Capital Command gangs.. He was being held at the anti-narcotics police headquarters in the state capital, Sao Paulo.In a letter released by his lawyer, Edinho, a former goalkeeper for Santos soccer club, said he was dependent on marijuana but denied being involved with drug traffickers.Police said that based on tapped phone calls they believed Edinho was involved with cocaine traffickers.Pele visited Edinho yesterday and said afterwards: "As you know I am a very emotional person and when I saw Edinho, I had nothing to say. Soccer legend Pele wept when he visited his son, who is in police custody in Brazil on suspicion of drug trafficking, and said he regretted he had failed to see Edinho was using narcotics. Edson Cholbi Nascimento, 34, known as Edinho, was arrested on Monday along with 51 others in the port city of Santos. With budget deficits in Washington soaring and ever greater demands being placed on law enforcement to combat terrorism, the federal government is probably squeezed too tight to take significant action - especially as state law agencies are not going to be helping out. "The reality is, we don't have the time or resources to do anything other than going after large-scale traffickers and large-scale growers," a federal prosecutor, McGregor Scott, told the San Francisco Chronicle In other words: the battle continues..

This was a somewhat disingenuous sentiment, since legislation has frequently been introduced in Congress and roundly rejected every time.So can we expect a sudden rush of police raids and terminal Aids patients being hauled off in handcuffs?Again, the answer is paradoxical. John Paul Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion, acknowledged that marijuana is effective, but said that it was up to Congress to enact more permissive laws. The plaintiffs, and the lower courts, said this right applied only to interstate commerce and so had no relevance to home-grown marijuana. The Supreme Court disagreed, in a 6-3 vote.Did the liberal justices argue that marijuana is not a legitimate medicine?Again, the paradoxical answer is no.

Under the Bush administration, which has taken a particularly hard anti-drug line, that status quo has meant regular raids on pot farms and distribution clinics. Mr Juncker said: "It would be advisable to reach agreement on the financial perspectives." This would avoid the EU getting "bogged down in a crisis".. What's the significance of the Supreme Court ruling on medical marijuana? What's the significance of the Supreme Court ruling on medical marijuana? The US Supreme Court has struck a blow against the medical marijuana movement, ruling that federal law enforcement agencies have the power to seize and destroy marijuana plants and arrest their growers - even in states which have passed medical marijuana laws. The court saw it mostly in terms of states' rights - a standard position among conservative jurists - versus the power of the federal government.