The Year on Drugs 2009: International Drug Policy Developments
Medical Marijuana: Congress Finally Lets District of Columbia Go for It
Appeal: Did You Know That We Are WINNING?
West Coast Weed Wars: Legalizing Legislators Come Out Swinging
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories
Medical Marijuana: New Jersey Patient Acquitted of Most Serious Charge, Convicted of Others
Medical Marijuana: Wisconsin Bill Gets Public Hearing
Search and Seizure: Ohio Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant to Search Cell Phones
Europe: Czech Government Announces Decriminalization Quantities -- Law Goes Into Effect New Year's Day
The Caribbean: Jamaica Lawmakers Calls for Ganja Decriminalization
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The Year on Drugs 2009: International Drug Policy Developments
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #613, 12/18/09
As 2009 winds to a close, we review the global year in drug policy. There were a number of events of global significance -- the trend toward decriminalization of drug possession in Europe and Latin America, the slow spread of heroin maintenance therapy, the frontal assault on global prohibitionist orthodoxy at the UN -- as well as new developments in ongoing drug-policy related struggles from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the cannabis cafes of Amsterdam.
This review can't cover everything -- it's a big world, and there's a lot happening in drug policy these days. Among the items worth at least mentioning in passing: Israel's embrace of medical marijuana, Canada's flirtation with mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana growers (still in process, and amended to be less harmful by the Canadian Senate), the continuing resort to the death penalty for drug offenses in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the bemusing link between cannabis and schizophrenia apparently at work only in some Commonwealth countries, the Andean drug war (unchanged in its essential outlines this year), and the rise of poor West African nations as favored smugglers' destinations.
What about Mexico? There is one glaring omission here, but there is a reason for that: In the third year of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's offensive against the so-called drug cartels, the violence is more intense and destabilizing than ever. What is happening in Mexico is certainly a drug policy-related phenomenon of global significance, but this year, with more than a billion US dollars in the anti-drug aid pipeline, beefed up border security, official acknowledgement that insatiable American appetites play a crucial role, and growing public and political concern about the violence on the border, we will examine the Mexican drug war in the context of US domestic drug policy issues. Look for it to be among the Top 10 domestic drug policy stories in our feature next issue.
With that as a caveat, here are this year's biggest global drug policy developments:
Afghanistan: War on Drugs, Meet War on Terror
Afghan opiumEight years after the US and NATO forces invaded and occupied Afghanistan, driving the Taliban from power, the Taliban have returned with a vengeance, fueled by revenues from the country's primary cash crop: opium. Western estimates of Taliban income from the poppy and heroin trade are in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually, which buys a lot of shiny new weapons for the resurgent insurgents.
This year has been the bloodiest yet for Western occupiers, with 495 US and NATO forces killed this year, according to iCasualties.org. Part of the uptick in violence can be attributed to the Taliban's opium wealth, but the decision by US and NATO forces to move aggressively into the Taliban's eastern and southern heartlands, especially Helmand and Kandahar provinces, has also led to increased fighting and higher casualties.
In June, President Obama, adhering to his election campaign vows if not the wishes of his some of his most ardent supporters, moved to directly confront the drug trade, sending 20,000 troops into Helmand to take on the Taliban and allied traffickers. But while that looked like more of the same, just weeks later, the US announced a major shift in its anti-drug policy in Afghanistan when US envoy Richard Holbrooke announced the US would no longer participate in poppy eradication campaigns. That was a startling, reality-driven break from previous US policy in Afghanistan, as well as with current US policies against coca production in Colombia and Peru.
Instead of persecuting poverty-stricken opium-growing peasants, the US and NATO would concentrate on drug manufacturers and traffickers, but only those linked to the Taliban -- not those linked to the corrupt and illegitimate (after this fall's fraudulent election fiasco) regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The US beefed up the in-country DEA contingent and even came up with a "hit list" of some 50 Afghan traffickers linked to the Taliban.
This fall, fighting has been intense in southern and eastern Afghanistan, as well as across the border in Pakistan, and now, the first of President Obama's promised 30,000-troop escalation is headed precisely for Helmand, where one of its first assignments will be to take and hold a major Taliban trafficking center. The war on drugs and the war on terror will continue to collide in Afghanistan, but now, at least, the imperatives of the war on terror have forced a historic shift in US anti-drug policy, at least in Afghanistan.
Latin American Leaders Call for a Drug Policy Paradigm Shift
Commission panel, former President of Colombia Cesar Gaviria on left (courtesy comunidadsegura.org)In February, a blue-ribbon panel of Latin American leaders, including former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, and former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria issued a report and statement saying the US-led war on drugs has failed and it is time to consider new policies, particularly treating drug use as a public health matter and decriminalizing marijuana possession.
The report, Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift, is the work of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which also includes prominent writers Paulo Coelho, Mario Vargas Llosa, Sergio Ramírez and Tomás Eloy Martínez as well as leading scholars, media members and politicians.
Latin America is the leading exporter of both cocaine and marijuana. As such, it has faced the ravages of heavy-handed American anti-drug interventions, such as Plan Colombia and earlier efforts to destroy the Bolivian coca crop, as well as the violence of drug trafficking organizations and politico-military formations of the left and right that have grown wealthy off the black market bonanza. And while the region's level of drug consumption has historically been low, it is on the rise.
"The main reason we organized this commission is because the available evidence indicates the war on drugs is a failed war," said Cardoso at a February press conference in Rio de Janeiro to announce the report. "We need a different paradigm to cope with the problem of drugs. The power of organized crime is undermining the very foundations of democracy in some Latin American countries. We must acknowledge that these policies have failed and we must break the taboo that prevents us from discussing different strategies."
''Global Marijuana Day'' demonstration in Mexico City, May 2008The report garnered considerable attention, not only in the US and Latin America, but worldwide, and it set the tone for a very reformist year in Latin America.
Mexico Decriminalizes Drug Possession
In May, Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs, including up to five grams of marijuana, a fifth-gram of ecstasy and methamphetamine, a tenth-gram of heroin, and a half-gram of cocaine. The new law closely resembled a 2006 decriminalization bill that had passed the legislature only to die in the face of US protests. There were no US protests this time.
With the Mexican government's action, drug decriminalization has now reached the very borders of the US.
But, according to well-placed observers, the Mexican decriminalization is a case of two steps forward, one step back. In addition to decriminalizing possession of very small amounts of drugs, the new law grants drug enforcement powers to state and local police forces that they never had before. That could mean an increase in the arrests and prosecution of retail-level drug sellers. Still, the long-term political ramifications could be helpful; as one observer noted, "the headline will read that Mexico decriminalized drugs."
Argentina Decriminalizes Marijuana Possession, Laws Against Possessing Other Drugs Tremble
Supreme Court of ArgentinaWhile Mexico decriminalized through the legislative process, Argentina is doing it through the courts. In a series of cases dating back to 2006, Argentine judges have grown increasingly skeptical of arguments for criminalizing drug use. In the spring, judges in Buenos Aires threw out marijuana cultivation charges against a defendant, saying the plants were for personal use, and the following month, a federal appeals court threw out ecstasy possession charges against a group of defendants, again saying the drugs were for personal use. In both cases, the courts cited a 2006 Argentine Supreme Court ruling that it was the burden of the state "to demonstrate unequivocally that the drugs were not for personal use." In the ecstasy case, the appeals court held that the portion of the country's drug law regarding drug possession must be declared unconstitutional.
In August, the Supreme Court did just that, using another marijuana possession case to rule that the section of the country's drug law that criminalizes drug possession is unconstitutional.While the ruling referred only to marijuana possession, the portion of the law it threw out makes no distinction among drugs.
Imprisoning people absent harm to others violates constitutional protections, a unanimous court held. "Each individual adult is responsible for making decisions freely about their desired lifestyle without state interference," their ruling said. "Private conduct is allowed unless it constitutes a real danger or causes damage to property or the rights of others. The state cannot establish morality."
"It is significant that the ruling was unanimous," said Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the Drugs and Democracy program at the Transnational Institute, which has worked closely with Latin American activists and politicians on drug reform issues. "It confirms the paradigm shift visible throughout the continent, which recognizes that drug use should be treated as a public health matter instead of, as in the past, when all involved, including users, were seen as criminals."
UN's Global Anti-Drug Bureaucracy Meets Organized Resistance
demonstration at the UN drug meeting, ViennaIt wasn't like this a decade ago, the last time the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs took place. This year, for the first time, the UN's global anti-drug bureaucracy ran into organized resistance when its Committee on Narcotic Drugs (CND) met in March in Vienna. Not only did a large contingent of drug reform, human rights, and public health NGOs show up to challenge global prohibitionist orthodoxy, they were joined by a number of European and Latin American countries showing serious signs of defecting from the half-century old prohibitionist consensus.
In the end, the CND issued a political statement and plan of action that largely reaffirmed existing prohibitionist policies and ignored harm reduction, but with some victories for reformers both substantive and symbolic. For one, the US delegation finally removed its objection to needle exchanges.
But if the global anti-drug bureaucracies ignored their critics in their report, they were impossible to ignore in Vienna. Demonstrations took place outside the meeting hall, and Bolivian President Evo Morales brandished then chewed coca leaves as he demanded that his country's sacred plant be removed from the list of proscribed substances.
Even UN Office on Drugs and Crime head Antonio Maria Costa was forced to publicly acknowledge the failures and unintended consequences of prohibition. In his address opening the session, Costa bravely argued that "drugs are not harmful because they are controlled; they are controlled because they are harmful," but was forced to concede that prohibition had created a dire situation in some places. "When mafias can buy elections, candidates, political parties, in a word, power, the consequences can only be highly destabilizing" he said. "While ghettoes burn, West Africa is under attack, drug cartels threaten Central America and drug money penetrates bankrupt financial institutions."
All the more reason to challenge prohibitionism and its consequences. After this year, the global anti-drug bureaucracy knows that not only is its long-held consensus under assault, it is beginning to crack.
Czech Republic Decriminalizes Drug Possession, Finally Sets Quantity Limits
Czech marijuana reform demonstration, 2005 (courtesy Michal Vlk)Following in Portugal's footsteps, authorities in the Czech Republic voted late last year to decriminalize the possession of "smaller than large amounts" of drugs. But that term was vague, leaving its interpretation up to police and prosecutors and resulting in situations where people like personal marijuana growers were being charged as traffickers.
This month, Czech authorities formalized "smaller than large amounts." The new guidelines mean Czechs will suffer neither arrest nor prosecution for up to 15 grams or five marijuana plants, five grams of hashish, 40 magic mushroom segments, five peyote plants, five LSD tablets, four ecstasy tablets, two grams of amphetamine or methamphetamine, 1.5 grams of heroin, five coca plants, or one gram of cocaine.
The new quantity rules go into effect on January 1.
Science vs. Politics in Great Britain
The British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is an official body charged with providing evidence-based analysis of drug policy issues for the British Home Office. Tensions between the ACMD and the Labor government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown had been on the rise since it rejected the ACMD's recommendation that marijuana, which had been down-scheduled from a Class B to a Class C (least harmful) drug under Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, remain at Class C. The government instead up-scheduled it back to Class B.
David NuttThe ACMD was slighted again in February, when it recommended that ecstasy be down-scheduled from Class A (most harmful) to Class B, only to have the Home Office reject that recommendation the same day. ACMD head Professor David Nutt also drew heated criticism from the Home Office -- as well as Britain's horsey set -- for heretically suggesting that ecstasy was safer than horse-riding. Nutt was forced to apologize for his remarks.
After a relatively quiet summer, the clash between drug science and drug politics exploded anew when Home Secretary Alan Johnson fired Nutt in late October for again criticizing the government's refusal to follow the science-based recommendations of the panel. That firing caused a huge fire storm of protest, including the resignations of at least six ACMD members, and was splashed across newspaper front pages for weeks.
Now, the credibility of the Labor government and its adherence to evidence-based policy-making have been called into serious doubt, as it becomes clear that Home Office drug scheduling decisions are driven by a political calculus, not a scientific one. And if the Home Office thought firing Nutt was going to make him go away, it was sadly mistaken. Nutt is maintaining a high public profile and is vowing to set up his own independent drug panel.
Whither Holland's Cannabis Coffee Shops?
downstairs of a Maastricht coffee shop (courtesy Wikimedia)This year has seen the long-running battle over the Netherland's famous cannabis coffee shops continue to escalate. Under the Dutch policy of "gedogen," or pragmatic tolerance, marijuana remains technically illegal in Holland, but the sale and possession of small amounts is tolerated and even regulated.
But that tolerant policy is not a favorite of the conservative coalition national government, and it has created a number of problems. "Drug tourism," as the influx of border town marijuana buyers from more repressive neighboring countries is known, has led to everything from traffic jams to public urination to lurking hard-drug peddlers.
And Holland's halfway approach to marijuana policy -- it does not allow for the regulated provision of marijuana to the coffee houses -- has led to the "backdoor problem," in which coffee shop proprietors must rely on criminal-by-definition suppliers to provide them with their product. That provides additional ammunition for the anti-coffee shop crowd.
The conservative coalition government, however, is split on how best to rein in the coffee shops and has promised not to take action at the national level until after the 2010 elections. That has left the field to local authorities, and they have responded.
In March, the "drug tourism" problem resulted in the announcement by the mayors of Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom that they would close all the coffee shops in their towns by September. In May, the mayors of the eight towns in the border province of Limburg announced coffee shops would be "members only." In August, the Dutch government announced it was providing more than $200,000 for a pilot "members only" program in the border town of Maastricht. Court challenges from coffee shop owners have so far failed to stop any of this.
Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, an urban renewal plan unveiled in May called for a reduction in coffee shops there from 226 to 192, with a 50% reduction in the number of coffee shops in the central Red Light District. But just last week, Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen fought back, saying that national coffee house policy should not be based solely on border "drug tourism" concerns, that he opposed the "members only" option, and that he rejected a ban on coffee houses within 250 yards of schools.
Holland's marijuana coffee shops have been around for more than 30 years now, but as was made clear this year, they will continue to be a battle front between the forces of Dutch conservatism and Dutch liberal pragmatism.
Heroin Maintenance Continues to Spread
maintenance programs can make heroin addiction cleaner and saferThis year saw a continuation of the slow spread of heroin maintenance programs for severely addicted users unamenable to other forms of drug treatment. At the beginning of the year, permanent or pilot heroin prescription programs were in place in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.
Denmark joined the club in February and Germany came aboard in June. These moves come after Switzerland voted in a popular referendum last year to move from a pilot to a permanent heroin maintenance program, based on favorable results from the pilot program.
Canada is about to join the club, too. After the success of the three-year North American Opiate Maintenance Initiative (NAOMI) in Vancouver, Canadian researchers are moving forward with SALOME (the Study to Assess Long-term Opiate Maintenance), a pilot heroin maintenance program set for Vancouver and Montreal. But as of late last month, Montreal's participation was a question mark after Quebec authorities said they would not pay their share of program costs.
Despite lingering political distaste for heroin by prescription, the body of evidence demonstrating its efficacy -- in terms of users' quality of life, public health, and public safety -- continues to grow. There has even been some discussion of bringing a heroin maintenance pilot program to the US. Dr. Peter Reuter, the renowned University of Maryland drug policy expert, authored a study this summer about the possibility of a pilot program in Baltimore.
There is an old saw about not being able to turn an ocean liner on a dime. That's certainly true when it comes to changing drug policies for the better at the national or international level. But each year, it seems that more progress is being made. Let's see what 2010 brings.
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Friday, December 18, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Texas cuts costs amid prison reform
Texas cuts costs amid prison reform
New treatment programs credited as prison population slows
By CINDY HORSWELL
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Dec. 15, 2009, 9:24AM
Share
Print Share Del.icio.usDiggTwitterYahoo! BuzzFacebookStumbleUponTexas has a long-standing reputation, branded in the culture of the Old West, as a state that is tough on crime.
Since the 1990s, the Lone Star state has been locking up criminals at an incredible rate. But housing all those Texas prisoners — which state authorities say once grew to equal the size of the entire federal prison system — was costly.
Now, Texas has a new swagger that comes from a recently released U.S. Justice Department report showing the growth of the state's prison population is slowing to the extent that three new prisons slated for construction have been scrapped. At the same time, the state is becoming the unlikely new role model for a prison reform movement spreading across the country.
State Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, and state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, worked across partisan lines to implement the “reinvestment movement” in 2007, which they say is just starting to show results. The program invests state funds in drug, alcohol and mental health programs to treat offenders rather than just prisons to house them.
“Texas is showing the rest of the country that if you look at research you can find ways to cut costs and crime at the same time,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center's public safety performance project, a nonprofit think tank. “Just this week the work that Texas has done was featured prominently at the national conference on state legislatures in San Diego. States are learning that they just can't build their way out of crime.”
Tony Fabelo, research director for the Justice Center for the Council of State Governments, helped Texas develop its program and is pleased to see the prison population stabilizing.
According to the Justice Department's national report on prisons released this week, the number of admissions to Texas prisons increased by 0.4 percent in 2008, which is much lower than the average increase of 3 percent that had occurred since 2000. The Texas Department of Corrections also reports that its cellblocks are being vacated so quickly that the prison population has stopped growing altogether and instead declined by 1,050 inmates from 2008 through this monthto 155,076.
Reversing a trend
Bill Sabol, a U.S. Justice Department statistician who wrote the report, said Texas was also one of two states showing the biggest drop in imprisonment rates. The number of people imprisoned per 100,000 population decreased by 30, going from 669 to 639 per 100,000.
Yet the number of people incarcerated in Texas still far exceeds the national average of 504 per 100,000 population, he added.
If these reforms keep progressing according to plan, Madden said, “We will not need to build another prison for five years.”
That reverses the trend that began in the 1980s. Between 1985 and 2005, the state prison population grew 300 percent and Texas spent $2.3 billion adding 108,000 beds.
But by 2005, Texas had reached a turning point: Either spend half a billion dollars to house 17,000 new prisoners or spend less than half that amount to reduce the prison population through treatment programs.
The result was 10,000 beds were set aside for substance abuse and mental programs for probationers, parolees and prisoners,
“The research showed that our prisons were being overwhelmed by those who could receive alternative treatment to incarceration and therefore preserve our resources for the dangerous violent offender,” Madden said.
He noted drastic cuts had been made to community-based treatment facilities by the 2003 Legislature. By 2006 more than 2,000 adults were on waiting lists.
Other changes were also made, such as setting a maximum limit for parole caseloads so that parolees had adequate supervision and investing in a program that partners nurses with low-income mothers to teach childcare skills.
Parole violations drop
What worried some critics was that crime might have a resurgence under these “feel-good” measures, said Marsha McLane, Madden's policy director. “But a lot of times offenders would much rather select a stint in jail rather than going through treatment and follow-up,” she said. “The key is getting the right person in treatment, not the violent offenders.”
The results have been promising. The state reports a dramatic 25 percent drop in parole violators being returned to prison while the number of those being paroled has increased by 3 percent.
“We've made a marked improvement in the re-entry of people released from prison,” Madden said.
He added that county jails are now no longer being used to house prisoners for the state as used to occur.
At the same time, communities across the state have been safer: The Texas Department of Public Safety reported major crime decreased by 3 percent in 2008.
Madden, who overcame stiff competition in his last re-election bid by an opponent who criticized him for being soft on crime, hopes to see funding for these treatment programs continue.
“We're a proud people who don't like change,” Madden said. “But now being tough and smart on crime is a better utilization of the taxpayer dollar.”
cindy.horswell@chron.com
New treatment programs credited as prison population slows
By CINDY HORSWELL
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Dec. 15, 2009, 9:24AM
Share
Print Share Del.icio.usDiggTwitterYahoo! BuzzFacebookStumbleUponTexas has a long-standing reputation, branded in the culture of the Old West, as a state that is tough on crime.
Since the 1990s, the Lone Star state has been locking up criminals at an incredible rate. But housing all those Texas prisoners — which state authorities say once grew to equal the size of the entire federal prison system — was costly.
Now, Texas has a new swagger that comes from a recently released U.S. Justice Department report showing the growth of the state's prison population is slowing to the extent that three new prisons slated for construction have been scrapped. At the same time, the state is becoming the unlikely new role model for a prison reform movement spreading across the country.
State Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, and state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, worked across partisan lines to implement the “reinvestment movement” in 2007, which they say is just starting to show results. The program invests state funds in drug, alcohol and mental health programs to treat offenders rather than just prisons to house them.
“Texas is showing the rest of the country that if you look at research you can find ways to cut costs and crime at the same time,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center's public safety performance project, a nonprofit think tank. “Just this week the work that Texas has done was featured prominently at the national conference on state legislatures in San Diego. States are learning that they just can't build their way out of crime.”
Tony Fabelo, research director for the Justice Center for the Council of State Governments, helped Texas develop its program and is pleased to see the prison population stabilizing.
According to the Justice Department's national report on prisons released this week, the number of admissions to Texas prisons increased by 0.4 percent in 2008, which is much lower than the average increase of 3 percent that had occurred since 2000. The Texas Department of Corrections also reports that its cellblocks are being vacated so quickly that the prison population has stopped growing altogether and instead declined by 1,050 inmates from 2008 through this monthto 155,076.
Reversing a trend
Bill Sabol, a U.S. Justice Department statistician who wrote the report, said Texas was also one of two states showing the biggest drop in imprisonment rates. The number of people imprisoned per 100,000 population decreased by 30, going from 669 to 639 per 100,000.
Yet the number of people incarcerated in Texas still far exceeds the national average of 504 per 100,000 population, he added.
If these reforms keep progressing according to plan, Madden said, “We will not need to build another prison for five years.”
That reverses the trend that began in the 1980s. Between 1985 and 2005, the state prison population grew 300 percent and Texas spent $2.3 billion adding 108,000 beds.
But by 2005, Texas had reached a turning point: Either spend half a billion dollars to house 17,000 new prisoners or spend less than half that amount to reduce the prison population through treatment programs.
The result was 10,000 beds were set aside for substance abuse and mental programs for probationers, parolees and prisoners,
“The research showed that our prisons were being overwhelmed by those who could receive alternative treatment to incarceration and therefore preserve our resources for the dangerous violent offender,” Madden said.
He noted drastic cuts had been made to community-based treatment facilities by the 2003 Legislature. By 2006 more than 2,000 adults were on waiting lists.
Other changes were also made, such as setting a maximum limit for parole caseloads so that parolees had adequate supervision and investing in a program that partners nurses with low-income mothers to teach childcare skills.
Parole violations drop
What worried some critics was that crime might have a resurgence under these “feel-good” measures, said Marsha McLane, Madden's policy director. “But a lot of times offenders would much rather select a stint in jail rather than going through treatment and follow-up,” she said. “The key is getting the right person in treatment, not the violent offenders.”
The results have been promising. The state reports a dramatic 25 percent drop in parole violators being returned to prison while the number of those being paroled has increased by 3 percent.
“We've made a marked improvement in the re-entry of people released from prison,” Madden said.
He added that county jails are now no longer being used to house prisoners for the state as used to occur.
At the same time, communities across the state have been safer: The Texas Department of Public Safety reported major crime decreased by 3 percent in 2008.
Madden, who overcame stiff competition in his last re-election bid by an opponent who criticized him for being soft on crime, hopes to see funding for these treatment programs continue.
“We're a proud people who don't like change,” Madden said. “But now being tough and smart on crime is a better utilization of the taxpayer dollar.”
cindy.horswell@chron.com
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Prosecution: No More Crack Pipe Felonies for Houston
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #612, 12/11/09
Beginning January 1, prosecutors in Harris County, Texas, will no longer file felony drug charges against people found with less than one one-hundredth of a gram of illegal drugs. Currently in Houston, people caught with trace amounts of drug or holding crack pipes with drug traces are routinely charged with felonies.
But under a new policy promulgated by Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos, police are instructed to instead issue Class C misdemeanor tickets to people caught in possession of crack pipes or trace amounts of drugs. That means arrestees will face only a $500 fine, not the up to two years in state jail mandated by the felony charge.
The cops are not happy. "It ties the hands of the officers who are making crack pipe cases against burglars and thieves," said Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officers' Union. "A crack pipe is not used for anything but smoking crack by a crack head. Crack heads, by and large, are also thieves and burglars. They're out there committing crimes," he told the Houston Chronicle.
But Lykos told the Chronicle there were good reasons to change the policy. Less than one-hundredth of a gram of a drug is not enough for more than one drug test, and defense attorneys often want to run their own tests, she said.
The policy change also "gives us more of an ability to focus on the violent offenses and the complex offenses," she added. "When you have finite resources, you have to make decisions, and this decision is a plus all around."
Last year, Harris County prosecutors filed 46,000 felony cases, with 13,713, or nearly 30%, for possession of less than a gram of controlled substances. It is difficult to say how many of those would not have been charged as felonies under the new policy because most were charged only as possession of less than a gram.
While police are grumbling, defense attorneys are beaming. "It's a smart move and it's an efficient move and it lets us get down to the business of handling criminal cases of a more serious magnitude," Nicole Deborde, president-elect of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, told the Chronicle.
Beginning January 1, prosecutors in Harris County, Texas, will no longer file felony drug charges against people found with less than one one-hundredth of a gram of illegal drugs. Currently in Houston, people caught with trace amounts of drug or holding crack pipes with drug traces are routinely charged with felonies.
But under a new policy promulgated by Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos, police are instructed to instead issue Class C misdemeanor tickets to people caught in possession of crack pipes or trace amounts of drugs. That means arrestees will face only a $500 fine, not the up to two years in state jail mandated by the felony charge.
The cops are not happy. "It ties the hands of the officers who are making crack pipe cases against burglars and thieves," said Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officers' Union. "A crack pipe is not used for anything but smoking crack by a crack head. Crack heads, by and large, are also thieves and burglars. They're out there committing crimes," he told the Houston Chronicle.
But Lykos told the Chronicle there were good reasons to change the policy. Less than one-hundredth of a gram of a drug is not enough for more than one drug test, and defense attorneys often want to run their own tests, she said.
The policy change also "gives us more of an ability to focus on the violent offenses and the complex offenses," she added. "When you have finite resources, you have to make decisions, and this decision is a plus all around."
Last year, Harris County prosecutors filed 46,000 felony cases, with 13,713, or nearly 30%, for possession of less than a gram of controlled substances. It is difficult to say how many of those would not have been charged as felonies under the new policy because most were charged only as possession of less than a gram.
While police are grumbling, defense attorneys are beaming. "It's a smart move and it's an efficient move and it lets us get down to the business of handling criminal cases of a more serious magnitude," Nicole Deborde, president-elect of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, told the Chronicle.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice from New York Times
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November 24, 2009
Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON — In the next several months, the Supreme Court will decide at least a half-dozen cases about the rights of people accused of crimes involving drugs, sex and corruption. Civil liberties groups and associations of defense lawyers have lined up on the side of the accused.
But so have conservative, libertarian and business groups. Their briefs and public statements are signs of an emerging consensus on the right that the criminal justice system is an aspect of big government that must be contained.
The development represents a sharp break with tough-on-crime policies associated with the Republican Party since the Nixon administration.
“It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “The left and the right have bent to the point where they are now in agreement on many issues. In the area of criminal justice, the whole idea of less government, less intrusion, less regulation has taken hold.”
Edwin Meese III, who was known as a fervent supporter of law and order as attorney general in the Reagan administration, now spends much of his time criticizing what he calls the astounding number and vagueness of federal criminal laws.
Mr. Meese once referred to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of the “criminals’ lobby.” These days, he said, “in terms of working with the A.C.L.U., if they want to join us, we’re happy to have them.”
Dick Thornburgh, who succeeded Mr. Meese as attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and stayed on under President George Bush, echoed that sentiment in Congressional testimony in July.
“The problem of overcriminalization is truly one of those issues upon which a wide variety of constituencies can agree,” Mr. Thornburgh said. “Witness the broad and strong support from such varied groups as the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Legal Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the A.B.A., the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the A.C.L.U.”
In an interview at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group where he is a fellow, Mr. Meese said the “liberal ideas of extending the power of the state” were to blame for an out-of-control criminal justice system. “Our tradition has always been,” he said, “to construe criminal laws narrowly to protect people from the power of the state.”
There are, the foundation says, more than 4,400 criminal offenses in the federal code, many of them lacking a requirement that prosecutors prove traditional kinds of criminal intent.
“It’s a violation of federal law to give a false weather report,” Mr. Meese said. “People get put in jail for importing lobsters.”
Such so-called overcriminalization is at the heart of the conservative critique of crime policy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce made the point in a recent friend-of-the-court brief about a federal law often used to prosecute corporate executives and politicians. The law, which makes it a crime for officials to defraud their employers of “honest services,” is, the brief said, both “unintelligible” and “used to target a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”
The Supreme Court will hear three cases concerning the honest-services law this term, indicating an exceptional interest in the topic.
Harvey A. Silverglate, a left-wing civil liberties lawyer in Boston, says he has been surprised and delighted by the reception that his new book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” has gotten in conservative circles. (A Heritage Foundation official offered this reporter a copy.)
The book argues that federal criminal law is so comprehensive and vague that all Americans violate it every day, meaning prosecutors can indict anyone at all.
“Libertarians and the civil liberties left have always had some common ground on these issues,” said Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason, a libertarian magazine. “The more vocal presence of conservatives on overcriminalization issues is really what’s new.”
Several strands of conservatism have merged in objecting to aspects of the criminal justice system. Some conservatives are suspicious of all government power, while others insist that the federal government has been intruding into matters the Constitution reserves to the states.
In January, for instance, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Comstock, about whether Congress has the constitutional power to authorize the continued confinement of people convicted of sex crimes after they have completed their criminal sentences.
Then there are conservatives who worry about government seizure of private property said to have been used to facilitate crimes, an issue raised in Alvarez v. Smith, which was argued in October.
“A joint on a yacht, and the whole thing is forfeited,” said Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush.
Some religious groups object to prison policies that appear to ignore the possibility of rehabilitation and redemption, and fiscal conservatives are concerned about the cost of maintaining the world’s largest prison population.
“Conservatives now recognize the economic consequences of a criminal justice leviathan,” said Erik Luna, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.
The roots of the conservative re-examination of crime policy might also be found in the jurisprudence of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The two justices, joined by liberal colleagues, have said the original meaning of the Constitution required them to rule against the government in, among other areas, the rights of criminal defendants to confront witnesses.
“Scalia and Thomas are vanguards of an understanding by the modern right that its distrust of government extends all the way to the criminal justice system,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University.
The court will hear another confrontation clause case, Briscoe v. Virginia, in January. It is a sequel to a decision in June that prosecutors may not use crime lab reports without live testimony from the analysts who prepared them.
The conservative re-evaluation of crime policy is not universal, of course. Two notable exceptions to the trend, said Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Institute’s criminal justice project, are Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
“Roberts and Alito are coming down consistently on the side of the government in these criminal justice cases,” Mr. Lynch said.
Some scholars are skeptical about conservatives’ timing and motives, noting that their voices are rising during a Democratic administration and amid demands for accountability for the economic crisis.
“The Justice Department now acts as a kind of counterweight to corporate power,” said Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri. “On the other side is an alliance between two strands of conservative thinking, the libertarian point of view and the corporate wing of the Republican Party.”
Mr. Meese acknowledged that the current climate was not the ideal one for his point of view. “We picked by accident a time,” he said, “when it was not a very popular topic in light of corporate frauds.”
Home
November 24, 2009
Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice
By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON — In the next several months, the Supreme Court will decide at least a half-dozen cases about the rights of people accused of crimes involving drugs, sex and corruption. Civil liberties groups and associations of defense lawyers have lined up on the side of the accused.
But so have conservative, libertarian and business groups. Their briefs and public statements are signs of an emerging consensus on the right that the criminal justice system is an aspect of big government that must be contained.
The development represents a sharp break with tough-on-crime policies associated with the Republican Party since the Nixon administration.
“It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “The left and the right have bent to the point where they are now in agreement on many issues. In the area of criminal justice, the whole idea of less government, less intrusion, less regulation has taken hold.”
Edwin Meese III, who was known as a fervent supporter of law and order as attorney general in the Reagan administration, now spends much of his time criticizing what he calls the astounding number and vagueness of federal criminal laws.
Mr. Meese once referred to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of the “criminals’ lobby.” These days, he said, “in terms of working with the A.C.L.U., if they want to join us, we’re happy to have them.”
Dick Thornburgh, who succeeded Mr. Meese as attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and stayed on under President George Bush, echoed that sentiment in Congressional testimony in July.
“The problem of overcriminalization is truly one of those issues upon which a wide variety of constituencies can agree,” Mr. Thornburgh said. “Witness the broad and strong support from such varied groups as the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Legal Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the A.B.A., the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the A.C.L.U.”
In an interview at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group where he is a fellow, Mr. Meese said the “liberal ideas of extending the power of the state” were to blame for an out-of-control criminal justice system. “Our tradition has always been,” he said, “to construe criminal laws narrowly to protect people from the power of the state.”
There are, the foundation says, more than 4,400 criminal offenses in the federal code, many of them lacking a requirement that prosecutors prove traditional kinds of criminal intent.
“It’s a violation of federal law to give a false weather report,” Mr. Meese said. “People get put in jail for importing lobsters.”
Such so-called overcriminalization is at the heart of the conservative critique of crime policy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce made the point in a recent friend-of-the-court brief about a federal law often used to prosecute corporate executives and politicians. The law, which makes it a crime for officials to defraud their employers of “honest services,” is, the brief said, both “unintelligible” and “used to target a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”
The Supreme Court will hear three cases concerning the honest-services law this term, indicating an exceptional interest in the topic.
Harvey A. Silverglate, a left-wing civil liberties lawyer in Boston, says he has been surprised and delighted by the reception that his new book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” has gotten in conservative circles. (A Heritage Foundation official offered this reporter a copy.)
The book argues that federal criminal law is so comprehensive and vague that all Americans violate it every day, meaning prosecutors can indict anyone at all.
“Libertarians and the civil liberties left have always had some common ground on these issues,” said Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason, a libertarian magazine. “The more vocal presence of conservatives on overcriminalization issues is really what’s new.”
Several strands of conservatism have merged in objecting to aspects of the criminal justice system. Some conservatives are suspicious of all government power, while others insist that the federal government has been intruding into matters the Constitution reserves to the states.
In January, for instance, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Comstock, about whether Congress has the constitutional power to authorize the continued confinement of people convicted of sex crimes after they have completed their criminal sentences.
Then there are conservatives who worry about government seizure of private property said to have been used to facilitate crimes, an issue raised in Alvarez v. Smith, which was argued in October.
“A joint on a yacht, and the whole thing is forfeited,” said Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush.
Some religious groups object to prison policies that appear to ignore the possibility of rehabilitation and redemption, and fiscal conservatives are concerned about the cost of maintaining the world’s largest prison population.
“Conservatives now recognize the economic consequences of a criminal justice leviathan,” said Erik Luna, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.
The roots of the conservative re-examination of crime policy might also be found in the jurisprudence of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The two justices, joined by liberal colleagues, have said the original meaning of the Constitution required them to rule against the government in, among other areas, the rights of criminal defendants to confront witnesses.
“Scalia and Thomas are vanguards of an understanding by the modern right that its distrust of government extends all the way to the criminal justice system,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University.
The court will hear another confrontation clause case, Briscoe v. Virginia, in January. It is a sequel to a decision in June that prosecutors may not use crime lab reports without live testimony from the analysts who prepared them.
The conservative re-evaluation of crime policy is not universal, of course. Two notable exceptions to the trend, said Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Institute’s criminal justice project, are Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
“Roberts and Alito are coming down consistently on the side of the government in these criminal justice cases,” Mr. Lynch said.
Some scholars are skeptical about conservatives’ timing and motives, noting that their voices are rising during a Democratic administration and amid demands for accountability for the economic crisis.
“The Justice Department now acts as a kind of counterweight to corporate power,” said Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri. “On the other side is an alliance between two strands of conservative thinking, the libertarian point of view and the corporate wing of the Republican Party.”
Mr. Meese acknowledged that the current climate was not the ideal one for his point of view. “We picked by accident a time,” he said, “when it was not a very popular topic in light of corporate frauds.”
Home
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Steps being taken to help Harris County mental health inmates
Steps being taken to help Harris County mental health inmates
by Alex Sanz
Posted on November 22, 2009 at 6:55 PM
Updated today at 6:55 PM
HOUSTON -- The head of the Harris County Judicial Mental Health Task Force is expected to present sweeping recommendations on how to help mental health inmates at the Harris County Jail in a report to be presented to county commissioners in December.
Among the recommendations crafted by the prominent Houston attorney George Parnham is a reintegration center where inmates with mental health problems can be transitioned back into society.
Harris County, he said, needed to provide inmates with case managers to help them secure employment, housing and social services. The process would begin at the Harris County Jail and eventually move to a stand-alone facility.
"The Harris County Jail is the largest mental health facility probably in the state of Texas and ranks, I'm sure, in the top ten in the United States," he said. "It is, without question, a warehouse whereby we just stack beds and put people that are mentally ill in them. It's something that touches everybody. Either directly or indirectly. And people have to become aware of it."
There are as many as 10,000 inmates, on any given day, at the Harris County Jail. About 20 percent have a history of mental problems. Statistics show the vast majority of them will reoffend and end up back in jail.
"We're [finally] talking about it," said Parnham, who spent much of the past year working with the mental health task force at the request of Sheriff Adrian Garcia. "There are systems in place in the county jail that answer some of these issues but we're not going to let go of this."
Final cost estimates had not been finalized but Parnham said the proposed reintegration center would ease jail overcrowding and become a model for other law enforcement agencies in Texas.
by Alex Sanz
Posted on November 22, 2009 at 6:55 PM
Updated today at 6:55 PM
HOUSTON -- The head of the Harris County Judicial Mental Health Task Force is expected to present sweeping recommendations on how to help mental health inmates at the Harris County Jail in a report to be presented to county commissioners in December.
Among the recommendations crafted by the prominent Houston attorney George Parnham is a reintegration center where inmates with mental health problems can be transitioned back into society.
Harris County, he said, needed to provide inmates with case managers to help them secure employment, housing and social services. The process would begin at the Harris County Jail and eventually move to a stand-alone facility.
"The Harris County Jail is the largest mental health facility probably in the state of Texas and ranks, I'm sure, in the top ten in the United States," he said. "It is, without question, a warehouse whereby we just stack beds and put people that are mentally ill in them. It's something that touches everybody. Either directly or indirectly. And people have to become aware of it."
There are as many as 10,000 inmates, on any given day, at the Harris County Jail. About 20 percent have a history of mental problems. Statistics show the vast majority of them will reoffend and end up back in jail.
"We're [finally] talking about it," said Parnham, who spent much of the past year working with the mental health task force at the request of Sheriff Adrian Garcia. "There are systems in place in the county jail that answer some of these issues but we're not going to let go of this."
Final cost estimates had not been finalized but Parnham said the proposed reintegration center would ease jail overcrowding and become a model for other law enforcement agencies in Texas.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Judicial Executions in Drug War from Drug war Chronicle
Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Latin America: Former Mexican Foreigner Minister Accuses Army of Extra-Judicial Executions in Drug War
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #609, 11/20/09
Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's foreign minister under President Vicente Fox, said Saturday that the Mexican military is engaging in the extrajudicial execution of members of drug trafficking organizations. The frank and surprising comments came as Castañeda spoke on a panel at the 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Jorge Castañeda"We are having more and more 'false positives,'" Castañeda said, referring to a term used in Colombia to describe people executed by the military and then described as guerrillas killed in combat. "Here in Mexico, apparent gang war killings are in fact being carried out by the military. Every time the cartels catch the police and military infiltrators and slice them up, the army says 'We're taking out ten of yours.' The statistics say that 90% of the killings are within the cartels, but the army is engaging in these killings."
President Felipe Calderon deployed the military against the so-called cartels in December 2006. Since then, more than 15,000 people have been killed in prohibition-related violence in Mexico, including more than 6,000 so far this year. Hundreds of police and soldiers are among the dead.
In response to a question asking for documentation of his assertions, Castañeda said: "The only known incident was a town in Chihuahua where the bodies of 29 sicarios (assassins) were found, with witnesses who said this was after they were detained. The press has not wanted to investigate this."
But the military can't keep its mouth shut, Castañeda said. "They go to bars and restaurants and get drunk and talk and they are going around saying how many people they have knocked off," he reported. "The 12 military officers killed by the cartels in Michoacan -- that's why the army went out and killed a bunch of other people."
Castañeda's comments come as the US State Department is preparing the process of certifying Mexican compliance with human rights conditions as part of the $1.4 billion Plan Merida anti-drug assistance package. The bill authorizing the aid requires that portions of it be withheld if the State Department determines Mexico is not in compliance.
Castañeda also criticized President Obama for turning a blind eye to human rights violations by the Mexican military. "Obama regrettably said that the human rights violations he was most concerned with was with the victims of the drug war," the former diplomat noted.
Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you.Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Latin America: Former Mexican Foreigner Minister Accuses Army of Extra-Judicial Executions in Drug War
view
translation
Printer Friendly Version Email this Article
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #609, 11/20/09
Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's foreign minister under President Vicente Fox, said Saturday that the Mexican military is engaging in the extrajudicial execution of members of drug trafficking organizations. The frank and surprising comments came as Castañeda spoke on a panel at the 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Jorge Castañeda"We are having more and more 'false positives,'" Castañeda said, referring to a term used in Colombia to describe people executed by the military and then described as guerrillas killed in combat. "Here in Mexico, apparent gang war killings are in fact being carried out by the military. Every time the cartels catch the police and military infiltrators and slice them up, the army says 'We're taking out ten of yours.' The statistics say that 90% of the killings are within the cartels, but the army is engaging in these killings."
President Felipe Calderon deployed the military against the so-called cartels in December 2006. Since then, more than 15,000 people have been killed in prohibition-related violence in Mexico, including more than 6,000 so far this year. Hundreds of police and soldiers are among the dead.
In response to a question asking for documentation of his assertions, Castañeda said: "The only known incident was a town in Chihuahua where the bodies of 29 sicarios (assassins) were found, with witnesses who said this was after they were detained. The press has not wanted to investigate this."
But the military can't keep its mouth shut, Castañeda said. "They go to bars and restaurants and get drunk and talk and they are going around saying how many people they have knocked off," he reported. "The 12 military officers killed by the cartels in Michoacan -- that's why the army went out and killed a bunch of other people."
Castañeda's comments come as the US State Department is preparing the process of certifying Mexican compliance with human rights conditions as part of the $1.4 billion Plan Merida anti-drug assistance package. The bill authorizing the aid requires that portions of it be withheld if the State Department determines Mexico is not in compliance.
Castañeda also criticized President Obama for turning a blind eye to human rights violations by the Mexican military. "Obama regrettably said that the human rights violations he was most concerned with was with the victims of the drug war," the former diplomat noted.
Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you.Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Grassley Amendment Censors Mention of Legalization or Decriminalization from Drug War Chronicle
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #607, 11/6/09
Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), an inveterate drug warrior, doesn't want to hear the L-word in Washington. This week, the corn-belt conservative offered an amendment to Senator Jim Webb's (D-VA) pending bill, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, that would explicitly forbid any recommendations that even mention drug legalization or decriminalization.
the face of ignorance and prejudice -- US Sen. Charles GrassleyWebb, a congressional champion of criminal justice and drug law reform, introduced the bill in a bid to fix what he considers a failing, costly, and inhumane criminal justice system, including the war on drugs. Webb's bill contemplates the creation of "a commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom." That would presumably include taking a close look at the impact of drug laws.
Grassley's amendment says its purpose is "to restrict the authority of the Commission to examine policies that favor decriminalization of violations of the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substances." The amendment in its entirety reads as follows:
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings related to current Federal, State, and local criminal justice policies and practices or reform recommendations that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.
Grassley's politically bowdlerizing ploy quickly drew the ire of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "Senator Grassley's censorship amendment would block what Senator Webb is trying to achieve with this bill," said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads the LEAP. "All along, Senator Webb has said that in the effort to fix our broken criminal justice system 'nothing should be off the table.' That should include the obvious solution of ending the 'drug war' as a way to solve the unintended problems caused by that failed policy."
As Grassley's amendment started to draw critical scrutiny, he attempted to defend himself. In a conference call with media this week, Grassley responded to a question about the amendment: "Well, my intent on that amendment isn't any different than any other amendments that are coming up. The Congress is setting up a commission to study certain things. And the commission is a -- is an arm of Congress, because Congress doesn't have time to review some of these laws. And -- and -- and the point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to -- to recommend or study the legalization of drugs."
When asked if his amendment would include limiting the discussion of medical marijuana, Grassley responded: "Yes, the extent to which it would be decriminalization, the answer is yes."
Grassley added that he had floated several amendments and that he would not necessarily introduce all of them. As of Thursday, he had not yet formally introduced his censorship amendment.
Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), an inveterate drug warrior, doesn't want to hear the L-word in Washington. This week, the corn-belt conservative offered an amendment to Senator Jim Webb's (D-VA) pending bill, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, that would explicitly forbid any recommendations that even mention drug legalization or decriminalization.
the face of ignorance and prejudice -- US Sen. Charles GrassleyWebb, a congressional champion of criminal justice and drug law reform, introduced the bill in a bid to fix what he considers a failing, costly, and inhumane criminal justice system, including the war on drugs. Webb's bill contemplates the creation of "a commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom." That would presumably include taking a close look at the impact of drug laws.
Grassley's amendment says its purpose is "to restrict the authority of the Commission to examine policies that favor decriminalization of violations of the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substances." The amendment in its entirety reads as follows:
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings related to current Federal, State, and local criminal justice policies and practices or reform recommendations that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.
Grassley's politically bowdlerizing ploy quickly drew the ire of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "Senator Grassley's censorship amendment would block what Senator Webb is trying to achieve with this bill," said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads the LEAP. "All along, Senator Webb has said that in the effort to fix our broken criminal justice system 'nothing should be off the table.' That should include the obvious solution of ending the 'drug war' as a way to solve the unintended problems caused by that failed policy."
As Grassley's amendment started to draw critical scrutiny, he attempted to defend himself. In a conference call with media this week, Grassley responded to a question about the amendment: "Well, my intent on that amendment isn't any different than any other amendments that are coming up. The Congress is setting up a commission to study certain things. And the commission is a -- is an arm of Congress, because Congress doesn't have time to review some of these laws. And -- and -- and the point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to -- to recommend or study the legalization of drugs."
When asked if his amendment would include limiting the discussion of medical marijuana, Grassley responded: "Yes, the extent to which it would be decriminalization, the answer is yes."
Grassley added that he had floated several amendments and that he would not necessarily introduce all of them. As of Thursday, he had not yet formally introduced his censorship amendment.
Mexican Drug War kills 15,000 since December 2006 from Drug War Chronicle
Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #607, 11/6/09
by Bernd Debussman Jr.
Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 5,800 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:
Ciuded Juárez (courtesy Daniel Schwen, Wikimedia)Thursday, October 29
In Guerrero, a body was found hanging from a highway overpass. The unidentified man had been shot in the head, and left with two notes with messages from "La Familia." In Ciudad Juárez, a high-ranking police intelligence official was killed when he was attacked by heavily armed gunmen as he ate in a restaurant. One policeman was killed, and the official and two bodyguards were wounded. A sign was later found taking responsibility for the attack, which was apparently ordered by "El Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa Federation. Additionally, nine other murders were reported in Ciudad Juárez, four in Sinaloa, one in Tijuana, and four bodies found in the trunk bed of a truck in Michoacán.
Saturday, October 31
In Sonora, a well known union leader was killed along with 14 others, including four children. Margarita Montes Parra, 56, was ambushed by gunmen armed with AK-47's. It is unclear whether his death was ordered by drug traffickers or as a result of his union work. One of his sons, Adrian, was killed two years ago in what is thought to be a drug-related murder. Parra made headlines by publicly accusing the governor of Sonora of protecting his son's killers. He also accused the Veracruz state government of being complicit in drug trafficking.
Monday, November 2
Officials identified four bodies that had been found executed in an SUV in Mexico City. Three of the men had the word "kidnappers" handwritten on their body with marker, and a sign was found in the vehicle which read "for kidnapping, the boss of bosses". This is the nickname of Beltran-Levy cartel boss Arturo Beltran-Levy. There has been an increase of violence against kidnappers and petty criminals in recent months on the part of vigilantes working with drug traffickers and elements of the police. Additionally, in Tijuana, 13 suspected cartel gunmen were captured after a firefight that wounded one soldier and one gunman.
Tuesday, November 3
In the town of San Pedro Garza Garcia, near Monterrey, the mayor announced the death of a drug trafficker hours before the body was actually found. After being sworn in, Mayor Mauricio Fernandez was quoted as saying that "Black Saldana, who is apparently the one asking for my head, was found dead today in Mexico City." His announcement came 3 ½ hours before the blindfolded corpse of "Black Saldana" (otherwise identified only by his first name, Hector) was found. While at first he evaded questions about his prior knowledge of the incident, Fernandez later claimed that he had been tipped off by US officials that he was going to be targeted, and then found out about Black Saldana's death through unspecified means.
In Durango, a journalist who specialized in police matters was found dead after being kidnapped by armed men on his way to work. Alongside the body was found a note, whose contents were not revealed to the public. Vladimir Antenna Garcia, who wrote for El Tempo de Durango, is the third journalist killed in Durango this year, and the eighth journalist killed in Mexico.
In Chihuahua, 18 people were killed in a 48 hour period. Nine of these murders occurred in Ciudad Juárez. Among them was a municipal police officer who was gunned down in a hair salon where he was accompanying his wife. Additionally, in the state of Veracruz, a high-ranking member of the Zetas organization, nicknamed "El Gonzo" or "Z-20" was killed after being shot by Mexican naval personnel. Four people were arrested during the operation.
Wednesday, November 4
In the city of Chihuahua, police and soldiers shot dead a federal policeman who was driving one of three cars that failed to stop for them. The police and troops were on a joint patrol when they attempted to stop the suspicious vehicles. The three vehicles ignored orders to stop, sparking off a gun battle that left the federal agent and left another unidentified man wounded.
In Ciudad Juárez, six people were gunned down in a bar. Among them was off-duty US Air Force Staff Sgt. David Booher, who was based at Holloman Air Force base outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. The motive for the attack was unclear, but it bore all the hallmarks of a drug-related murder in Ciudad Juárez. The incident brings the number of deaths in Ciudad Juárez to 30 over the last four days. Additionally, in Garcia, Nuevo Leon, a recently appointed police chief was killed along with four of his bodyguards when they were ambushed by an unknown known of heavily armed gunmen.
Body count for the week: 111Body count for the year: 6,286Body count since December 2006: 15,000+
Read the last Mexico Drug War Update here.
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #607, 11/6/09
by Bernd Debussman Jr.
Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 5,800 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:
Ciuded Juárez (courtesy Daniel Schwen, Wikimedia)Thursday, October 29
In Guerrero, a body was found hanging from a highway overpass. The unidentified man had been shot in the head, and left with two notes with messages from "La Familia." In Ciudad Juárez, a high-ranking police intelligence official was killed when he was attacked by heavily armed gunmen as he ate in a restaurant. One policeman was killed, and the official and two bodyguards were wounded. A sign was later found taking responsibility for the attack, which was apparently ordered by "El Chapo" Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa Federation. Additionally, nine other murders were reported in Ciudad Juárez, four in Sinaloa, one in Tijuana, and four bodies found in the trunk bed of a truck in Michoacán.
Saturday, October 31
In Sonora, a well known union leader was killed along with 14 others, including four children. Margarita Montes Parra, 56, was ambushed by gunmen armed with AK-47's. It is unclear whether his death was ordered by drug traffickers or as a result of his union work. One of his sons, Adrian, was killed two years ago in what is thought to be a drug-related murder. Parra made headlines by publicly accusing the governor of Sonora of protecting his son's killers. He also accused the Veracruz state government of being complicit in drug trafficking.
Monday, November 2
Officials identified four bodies that had been found executed in an SUV in Mexico City. Three of the men had the word "kidnappers" handwritten on their body with marker, and a sign was found in the vehicle which read "for kidnapping, the boss of bosses". This is the nickname of Beltran-Levy cartel boss Arturo Beltran-Levy. There has been an increase of violence against kidnappers and petty criminals in recent months on the part of vigilantes working with drug traffickers and elements of the police. Additionally, in Tijuana, 13 suspected cartel gunmen were captured after a firefight that wounded one soldier and one gunman.
Tuesday, November 3
In the town of San Pedro Garza Garcia, near Monterrey, the mayor announced the death of a drug trafficker hours before the body was actually found. After being sworn in, Mayor Mauricio Fernandez was quoted as saying that "Black Saldana, who is apparently the one asking for my head, was found dead today in Mexico City." His announcement came 3 ½ hours before the blindfolded corpse of "Black Saldana" (otherwise identified only by his first name, Hector) was found. While at first he evaded questions about his prior knowledge of the incident, Fernandez later claimed that he had been tipped off by US officials that he was going to be targeted, and then found out about Black Saldana's death through unspecified means.
In Durango, a journalist who specialized in police matters was found dead after being kidnapped by armed men on his way to work. Alongside the body was found a note, whose contents were not revealed to the public. Vladimir Antenna Garcia, who wrote for El Tempo de Durango, is the third journalist killed in Durango this year, and the eighth journalist killed in Mexico.
In Chihuahua, 18 people were killed in a 48 hour period. Nine of these murders occurred in Ciudad Juárez. Among them was a municipal police officer who was gunned down in a hair salon where he was accompanying his wife. Additionally, in the state of Veracruz, a high-ranking member of the Zetas organization, nicknamed "El Gonzo" or "Z-20" was killed after being shot by Mexican naval personnel. Four people were arrested during the operation.
Wednesday, November 4
In the city of Chihuahua, police and soldiers shot dead a federal policeman who was driving one of three cars that failed to stop for them. The police and troops were on a joint patrol when they attempted to stop the suspicious vehicles. The three vehicles ignored orders to stop, sparking off a gun battle that left the federal agent and left another unidentified man wounded.
In Ciudad Juárez, six people were gunned down in a bar. Among them was off-duty US Air Force Staff Sgt. David Booher, who was based at Holloman Air Force base outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. The motive for the attack was unclear, but it bore all the hallmarks of a drug-related murder in Ciudad Juárez. The incident brings the number of deaths in Ciudad Juárez to 30 over the last four days. Additionally, in Garcia, Nuevo Leon, a recently appointed police chief was killed along with four of his bodyguards when they were ambushed by an unknown known of heavily armed gunmen.
Body count for the week: 111Body count for the year: 6,286Body count since December 2006: 15,000+
Read the last Mexico Drug War Update here.
Veterans Incarcerated and Ignored from Drug War Chronicle
Veterans Incarcerated and Ignored When They Could Be Getting Help, Report Finds
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #607, 11/6/09
Roughly 200,000 US veterans are in prison or jail, many of them there because of substance abuse or mental health issues, according to a new report released Wednesday. The report outlines the problem and suggests reforms that could ease the plight of American soldiers returning from the war zone and trying to make the transition back to civilian society.
VA Medical Center, Columbia, MOAccording to the report, 140,000 vets were in prison in 2004, with tens of thousands more serving time in jails. Nearly half (46%) of vets doing time in federal prison were incarcerated for drug offenses, while 15% of those in state prison were, including 5.6% doing time for simple possession. Three out five (61%) of incarcerated vets met the criteria for substance dependence or abuse.
The report, Healing a Broken System: Veterans Battling Addiction and Incarceration, comes at a critical time. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US faces a mounting challenge in caring for returning vets.
Many are returning home damaged by their experiences. According to the report, 30% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans report symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, depression, mental illness, or other cognitive disability. These medical conditions, if left untreated, can contribute to problematic drug use, addiction, and fatal overdoses, as well as homelessness, suicide, and criminality, particular violations of the drug laws.
While the study mentions 200,000 vets behind bars, the number is most likely much higher. That's because owing to problems in data collection -- a problem in itself -- the last year for which hard numbers on vets behind bars is available was 2004. Since then, more than a million more vets have returned from their deployments and mustered out.
The report had its genesis about a year and a half ago, when the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) teamed up with a classroom of law students at Northeastern University in Boston to investigate the obstacles veterans were facing in obtaining adequate access to mental health and substance abuse services. In addition to a series of surprising and dramatic findings, the report also includes a list of specific recommendations about how to improve services for vets suffering mental health and substance abuse issues.
"We learned that far too many returning vets are falling victim to the war on drugs because of barriers to effective treatment," said DPA's Dan Abrahamson at a Wednesday press conference. "There are nearly a quarter million vets behind bars right now for crimes motivated in part by mental health or drug addiction problems. One third of returning vets report symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Also, vets suffer from traumatic brain injury, depression, and mental illness at higher rates than normal. All of those are contributory factors to substance abuse and drug addiction, as well as overdose, homelessness, suicide, and being arrested for a non-violent drug offense."
In the battle theater, soldiers are supposed to function despite high stress, and the military is more than willing to prescribe them whatever it takes to keep them fighting. But it's a different story when the vets come home.
"Service-related drug dependency is being talked about quite a bit in the veterans community, but is not well understood outside the military," said Tom Tarantino, an Iraq war veteran and now legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The ease of obtaining prescriptions in theater is staggering," he explained. "I know crack dealers who are more discriminating about issuing drugs than some of the medics I saw in Iraq. It's alarming how many people were just given anti-depressants instead of asking whether they were really fit for duty," said the veterans' lobbyist.
"Sometimes, it's just a matter of expediency and life in a combat zone, but then you have vets coming back from an environment where meds are very loosely prescribed and they are confronted with a medical system much more stringent about issuing drugs," Tarantino explained. "And that can cause problems."
"Let's be smarter than the problem," said veterans' advocate Guy Gambill. "We can't afford not to be. We arrest too many people and incarcerate them for too long. Then the mark of a criminal record keeps them from getting jobs, housing, and other services, and then the recidivism rate goes up."
There are things that can be done, Gambill said. States can change their incarceration policies. Localities can be more proactive.
"Chicago police and the LAPD are doing front-end interventions," Gambill noted. "In LA, trained peer specialists are doing ride-alongs with the LAPD so the officers will recognize Iraq and Afghanistan war vets. In Chicago, police are doing crisis intervention training, and the first hundred of them are all Iraq and Afghanistan vets. They'll try to grab these guys at first contact and get them into treatment instead of jail. These sorts of peer-led interventions work very well. We need to catch this on the front end, so we don't have 200,000 homeless vets on the streets like we do now."
Another stumbling block is the Department of Veterans Affairs current policy on drug treatment for vets. The VA is willing to offer treatment, but not for vets behind bars.
"We need the Department of Veterans Affairs to lift their ban on drug treatment of incarcerated vets," said Tarantino. "We're pleased that the department now has a justice coordinator at every VA hospital, but they're waiting outside the prison door, not inside, when the vets need it most. This is a regulation they can change with the stroke of a pen," he said.
Yet another problem for vets, especially those with substance abuse issues, is the lack of access to proven treatments. And because the insurance provided to soldiers by the armed forces also covers their families, lack of access to treatment affects them as well.
"Vets don't qualify for substance abuse treatment unless they are diagnosed with PTSD," said Abel Moreno, a former Army sergeant who saw service in both theaters and who now works with veterans through his organization Vets 4 Vets. "We are fighting two wars at once. It's obvious PTSD exists, and it's clear there are going to be substance abuse issues. We've created a subgenre among today's vets where there is a pain pill-popping mitigation ideal. We need quantified data so we can attack this situation head on," he said.
It's not only in failing to provide drug treatment absent a PTSD diagnosis where the DOD falls down, said Dr. Bob Newman, MD, director of the Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. "Tricare, the Department of Defense insurance plan refuses to pay for maintenance treatment of addiction with methadone or buprenorphine," he noted. "Maintenance therapy is not a new idea. It's endorsed by agencies such as NIDA, SAMHSA, the Institute of Medicine, and the World Health Organization. The US government supports this, yet DOD has an insurance plan that excludes maintenance treatment without explanation. That's outrageous," he said.
Tricare insures not only military personnel, but also their families. Tricare's refusal to pay for maintenance therapy nearly cost Teresa Bridges her daughter. Teresa's daughter, Amanda, married a soldier, Sgt. Shawn Dressler. Dressler was killed in combat shortly after the couple were wed, and Amanda retreated into a haze of Lortab and Tramitol. Tricare paid for her treatment, but after a year, her doctor noted on her records that she was being subscribed maintenance doses of Suboxone.
"Suddenly, Tricare dropped her like a hot potato," Bridges said. "Tricare believes taking Suboxone is just substituting one addictive drug for another -- at least that's what they told me. Amanda has done well on Suboxone, and if she stops taking it, she will eventually relapse. Fortunately, she is now in a temporary assistance program, but that will end after a year."
There are potential reforms that could ease the plight of returning vets, the report said. Among them are:
Changes in state and federal statutes to focus on treatment instead of incarceration for veterans who commit nonviolent drug-related offenses.
Adoption by government agencies of overdose prevention programs and policies targeting veterans who misuse substances or take prescription medications.
Significantly expanded access for veterans to medication-assisted therapies such as methadone and buprenorphine to treat opioid dependence.
"The care and feeding and support of vets is a national concern and responsibility," said Gen. Stephen Xenakis, MD, Special Adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for Staff, Warrior & Family Support . "We are looking to knit together all the various services and institutions so that the soldier who has served and come home and ends up having problems or maybe ended up incarcerated gets treatment from all the sources available."
One of the big problems, said Tarantino, is lack of hard information. He noted that the Justice Department numbers in the report are from 2004. "In 2004, there were over one million fewer vets than there are today," he said. "We don't know how many vets are behind bars right now. We have no method for tracking vets unless they interact with some social services. We need to have DOD and DOJ compare lists. We need data," he said.
Lack of coordination among agencies dealing with vets is part of the problem, said Xenakis. "We need to better configure what we're doing," he said. "Records are not shared. The Department of Justice doesn't have access to Department of Defense records. We need to get organized so we can track people over time."
That effort has the support of the Pentagon, Xenakis said. "Our leadership heartily endorses this," he said. "It is really important that this information that this information is out there now, and that we follow it with the best action plans we can create. As a country, we have a responsibility to support our vets."
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It's not just Iraq and Afghanistan vetsComment posted by War Widow on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 6:23pm
My husband, Jeffrey J. McCrea, came home from Vietnam in 1971 with one helluva drug problem (which he didn't have when he went over there). He immersed himself in the drug and alcohol lifestyle, because that was the only thing that numbed the pain. He woke up IN VIETNAM, EVERY NIGHT. In 1989, he was finally persuaded to get help. From the VA? Not on your life. He went through a former Marine combat vet's treatment center. The VA was more than willing to prescribe an endless list of medications, including methadone pills for his chronic pain following 32 surgeries on his right leg alone, not to mention at least 10 operations on other parts of his body. He was given antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants, muscle relaxants, pain medications...but nobody actually helped him process the things he'd seen over there that haunted him permanently, endlessly. He then developed epilepsy. The VA prescribed Dilantin but never checked his blood levels. On June 17, 1992, Jeff decided he couldn't face one more day in his own personal living hell; he put his .41 magnum to his head and pulled the trigger. The VA might just as well have bought him the ammo and handed him the gun. As far as I'm concerned, he died in Vietnam; it just took his body 21 years to catch up. Nobody back then acknowledged PTSD. Although it is now recognized, from what I've seen, they're not really doing a damn thing to help these vets. You'd think that with several decades of experience, somebody, somewhere would have figured out that PTSD is a lifelong sentence; these poor vets do whatever they can to cope with things in their heads that the rest of us will NEVER understand. Locking them up is NOT a solution.
reply email this page
helpComment posted by sunny ranck on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 10:04am
God help us all
reply email this page
VeteransforMedicalMarijuana.org V.M.M.A.Comment posted by disgruntled veteran for peace on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 4:45pm
Real help for veterans and loved ones from people who care and understand what you are going through.For goodness sake give Veterans for Medical Marijuana access a chance to really help . Strong support along with cannabis natural health is effective for pain,p.t.s.d.,cancer,you name it. Special thanks and great appreciation to all who serve and to all supporting family and friends as well. Love and peace to all.
reply email this page
Israelis Have It RightComment posted by 11BravoRTOVN on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 7:00pm
While the Univ. of Haifa just came out with their "Cannabis for PTSD" study, the Israeli Army has been giving cannabis to their PTSD soldiers for some time now. Reading their stories led me to give it a try and WOW. Now, I don't "smoke." I vaporize and take only one hit during a session. Without getting high, I no longer have those "sticky," anger building thoughts. They're turned "slippery" and vanish. When my wife sees me getting edgy, she simply says, "Go to the bathroom." That's my cue that she sees it surfacing again and for me to go take a hit to calm down. And as fast as you can walk up stairs and back down stairs, the PTSD episode has passed.
We know that the VA will NEVER allow us to have medical marijuana as long as the US prescribes to the age old draconian drug laws we now have. That's why it behoves you to join the reform movement in your state as changing the states is how we change the feds. We were all children once. Now, do it for the VETS!
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #607, 11/6/09
Roughly 200,000 US veterans are in prison or jail, many of them there because of substance abuse or mental health issues, according to a new report released Wednesday. The report outlines the problem and suggests reforms that could ease the plight of American soldiers returning from the war zone and trying to make the transition back to civilian society.
VA Medical Center, Columbia, MOAccording to the report, 140,000 vets were in prison in 2004, with tens of thousands more serving time in jails. Nearly half (46%) of vets doing time in federal prison were incarcerated for drug offenses, while 15% of those in state prison were, including 5.6% doing time for simple possession. Three out five (61%) of incarcerated vets met the criteria for substance dependence or abuse.
The report, Healing a Broken System: Veterans Battling Addiction and Incarceration, comes at a critical time. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US faces a mounting challenge in caring for returning vets.
Many are returning home damaged by their experiences. According to the report, 30% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans report symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, depression, mental illness, or other cognitive disability. These medical conditions, if left untreated, can contribute to problematic drug use, addiction, and fatal overdoses, as well as homelessness, suicide, and criminality, particular violations of the drug laws.
While the study mentions 200,000 vets behind bars, the number is most likely much higher. That's because owing to problems in data collection -- a problem in itself -- the last year for which hard numbers on vets behind bars is available was 2004. Since then, more than a million more vets have returned from their deployments and mustered out.
The report had its genesis about a year and a half ago, when the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) teamed up with a classroom of law students at Northeastern University in Boston to investigate the obstacles veterans were facing in obtaining adequate access to mental health and substance abuse services. In addition to a series of surprising and dramatic findings, the report also includes a list of specific recommendations about how to improve services for vets suffering mental health and substance abuse issues.
"We learned that far too many returning vets are falling victim to the war on drugs because of barriers to effective treatment," said DPA's Dan Abrahamson at a Wednesday press conference. "There are nearly a quarter million vets behind bars right now for crimes motivated in part by mental health or drug addiction problems. One third of returning vets report symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Also, vets suffer from traumatic brain injury, depression, and mental illness at higher rates than normal. All of those are contributory factors to substance abuse and drug addiction, as well as overdose, homelessness, suicide, and being arrested for a non-violent drug offense."
In the battle theater, soldiers are supposed to function despite high stress, and the military is more than willing to prescribe them whatever it takes to keep them fighting. But it's a different story when the vets come home.
"Service-related drug dependency is being talked about quite a bit in the veterans community, but is not well understood outside the military," said Tom Tarantino, an Iraq war veteran and now legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The ease of obtaining prescriptions in theater is staggering," he explained. "I know crack dealers who are more discriminating about issuing drugs than some of the medics I saw in Iraq. It's alarming how many people were just given anti-depressants instead of asking whether they were really fit for duty," said the veterans' lobbyist.
"Sometimes, it's just a matter of expediency and life in a combat zone, but then you have vets coming back from an environment where meds are very loosely prescribed and they are confronted with a medical system much more stringent about issuing drugs," Tarantino explained. "And that can cause problems."
"Let's be smarter than the problem," said veterans' advocate Guy Gambill. "We can't afford not to be. We arrest too many people and incarcerate them for too long. Then the mark of a criminal record keeps them from getting jobs, housing, and other services, and then the recidivism rate goes up."
There are things that can be done, Gambill said. States can change their incarceration policies. Localities can be more proactive.
"Chicago police and the LAPD are doing front-end interventions," Gambill noted. "In LA, trained peer specialists are doing ride-alongs with the LAPD so the officers will recognize Iraq and Afghanistan war vets. In Chicago, police are doing crisis intervention training, and the first hundred of them are all Iraq and Afghanistan vets. They'll try to grab these guys at first contact and get them into treatment instead of jail. These sorts of peer-led interventions work very well. We need to catch this on the front end, so we don't have 200,000 homeless vets on the streets like we do now."
Another stumbling block is the Department of Veterans Affairs current policy on drug treatment for vets. The VA is willing to offer treatment, but not for vets behind bars.
"We need the Department of Veterans Affairs to lift their ban on drug treatment of incarcerated vets," said Tarantino. "We're pleased that the department now has a justice coordinator at every VA hospital, but they're waiting outside the prison door, not inside, when the vets need it most. This is a regulation they can change with the stroke of a pen," he said.
Yet another problem for vets, especially those with substance abuse issues, is the lack of access to proven treatments. And because the insurance provided to soldiers by the armed forces also covers their families, lack of access to treatment affects them as well.
"Vets don't qualify for substance abuse treatment unless they are diagnosed with PTSD," said Abel Moreno, a former Army sergeant who saw service in both theaters and who now works with veterans through his organization Vets 4 Vets. "We are fighting two wars at once. It's obvious PTSD exists, and it's clear there are going to be substance abuse issues. We've created a subgenre among today's vets where there is a pain pill-popping mitigation ideal. We need quantified data so we can attack this situation head on," he said.
It's not only in failing to provide drug treatment absent a PTSD diagnosis where the DOD falls down, said Dr. Bob Newman, MD, director of the Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. "Tricare, the Department of Defense insurance plan refuses to pay for maintenance treatment of addiction with methadone or buprenorphine," he noted. "Maintenance therapy is not a new idea. It's endorsed by agencies such as NIDA, SAMHSA, the Institute of Medicine, and the World Health Organization. The US government supports this, yet DOD has an insurance plan that excludes maintenance treatment without explanation. That's outrageous," he said.
Tricare insures not only military personnel, but also their families. Tricare's refusal to pay for maintenance therapy nearly cost Teresa Bridges her daughter. Teresa's daughter, Amanda, married a soldier, Sgt. Shawn Dressler. Dressler was killed in combat shortly after the couple were wed, and Amanda retreated into a haze of Lortab and Tramitol. Tricare paid for her treatment, but after a year, her doctor noted on her records that she was being subscribed maintenance doses of Suboxone.
"Suddenly, Tricare dropped her like a hot potato," Bridges said. "Tricare believes taking Suboxone is just substituting one addictive drug for another -- at least that's what they told me. Amanda has done well on Suboxone, and if she stops taking it, she will eventually relapse. Fortunately, she is now in a temporary assistance program, but that will end after a year."
There are potential reforms that could ease the plight of returning vets, the report said. Among them are:
Changes in state and federal statutes to focus on treatment instead of incarceration for veterans who commit nonviolent drug-related offenses.
Adoption by government agencies of overdose prevention programs and policies targeting veterans who misuse substances or take prescription medications.
Significantly expanded access for veterans to medication-assisted therapies such as methadone and buprenorphine to treat opioid dependence.
"The care and feeding and support of vets is a national concern and responsibility," said Gen. Stephen Xenakis, MD, Special Adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for Staff, Warrior & Family Support . "We are looking to knit together all the various services and institutions so that the soldier who has served and come home and ends up having problems or maybe ended up incarcerated gets treatment from all the sources available."
One of the big problems, said Tarantino, is lack of hard information. He noted that the Justice Department numbers in the report are from 2004. "In 2004, there were over one million fewer vets than there are today," he said. "We don't know how many vets are behind bars right now. We have no method for tracking vets unless they interact with some social services. We need to have DOD and DOJ compare lists. We need data," he said.
Lack of coordination among agencies dealing with vets is part of the problem, said Xenakis. "We need to better configure what we're doing," he said. "Records are not shared. The Department of Justice doesn't have access to Department of Defense records. We need to get organized so we can track people over time."
That effort has the support of the Pentagon, Xenakis said. "Our leadership heartily endorses this," he said. "It is really important that this information that this information is out there now, and that we follow it with the best action plans we can create. As a country, we have a responsibility to support our vets."
Bookmark/Search this post with: digg reddit
Drug War Issues Addiction Treatment - Addiction - Reentry/Rehabilitation - Incarceration - Collateral Sanctions
Consequences of Prohibition Overdoses
Politics & Advocacy Treatment Not Jail - Executive Branch
email this page
<- previous article in this issue next article in this issue ->
It's not just Iraq and Afghanistan vetsComment posted by War Widow on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 6:23pm
My husband, Jeffrey J. McCrea, came home from Vietnam in 1971 with one helluva drug problem (which he didn't have when he went over there). He immersed himself in the drug and alcohol lifestyle, because that was the only thing that numbed the pain. He woke up IN VIETNAM, EVERY NIGHT. In 1989, he was finally persuaded to get help. From the VA? Not on your life. He went through a former Marine combat vet's treatment center. The VA was more than willing to prescribe an endless list of medications, including methadone pills for his chronic pain following 32 surgeries on his right leg alone, not to mention at least 10 operations on other parts of his body. He was given antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants, muscle relaxants, pain medications...but nobody actually helped him process the things he'd seen over there that haunted him permanently, endlessly. He then developed epilepsy. The VA prescribed Dilantin but never checked his blood levels. On June 17, 1992, Jeff decided he couldn't face one more day in his own personal living hell; he put his .41 magnum to his head and pulled the trigger. The VA might just as well have bought him the ammo and handed him the gun. As far as I'm concerned, he died in Vietnam; it just took his body 21 years to catch up. Nobody back then acknowledged PTSD. Although it is now recognized, from what I've seen, they're not really doing a damn thing to help these vets. You'd think that with several decades of experience, somebody, somewhere would have figured out that PTSD is a lifelong sentence; these poor vets do whatever they can to cope with things in their heads that the rest of us will NEVER understand. Locking them up is NOT a solution.
reply email this page
helpComment posted by sunny ranck on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 10:04am
God help us all
reply email this page
VeteransforMedicalMarijuana.org V.M.M.A.Comment posted by disgruntled veteran for peace on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 4:45pm
Real help for veterans and loved ones from people who care and understand what you are going through.For goodness sake give Veterans for Medical Marijuana access a chance to really help . Strong support along with cannabis natural health is effective for pain,p.t.s.d.,cancer,you name it. Special thanks and great appreciation to all who serve and to all supporting family and friends as well. Love and peace to all.
reply email this page
Israelis Have It RightComment posted by 11BravoRTOVN on Sat, 11/07/2009 - 7:00pm
While the Univ. of Haifa just came out with their "Cannabis for PTSD" study, the Israeli Army has been giving cannabis to their PTSD soldiers for some time now. Reading their stories led me to give it a try and WOW. Now, I don't "smoke." I vaporize and take only one hit during a session. Without getting high, I no longer have those "sticky," anger building thoughts. They're turned "slippery" and vanish. When my wife sees me getting edgy, she simply says, "Go to the bathroom." That's my cue that she sees it surfacing again and for me to go take a hit to calm down. And as fast as you can walk up stairs and back down stairs, the PTSD episode has passed.
We know that the VA will NEVER allow us to have medical marijuana as long as the US prescribes to the age old draconian drug laws we now have. That's why it behoves you to join the reform movement in your state as changing the states is how we change the feds. We were all children once. Now, do it for the VETS!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Push to Legalize Marijuana Gains Ground in California from New York Times
October 28, 2009
Push to Legalize Marijuana Gains Ground in California
By JESSE McKINLEY
SAN FRANCISCO — These are heady times for advocates of legalized marijuana in California — and only in small part because of the newly relaxed approach of the federal government toward medical marijuana.
State lawmakers are holding a hearing on Wednesday on the effects of a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate the drug — in what would be the first such law in the United States. Tax officials estimate the legislation could bring the struggling state about $1.4 billion a year, and though the bill’s fate in the Legislature is uncertain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would be open to a “robust debate” on the issue.
California voters are also taking up legalization. Three separate initiatives are being circulated for signatures to appear on the ballot next year, all of which would permit adults to possess marijuana for personal use and allow local governments to tax it. Even opponents of legalization suggest that an initiative is likely to qualify for a statewide vote.
“All of us in the movement have had the feeling that we’ve been running into the wind for years,” said James P. Gray, a retired judge in Orange County who has been outspoken in support of legalization. “Now we sense we are running with the wind.”
Proponents of the leading ballot initiative have collected nearly 300,000 signatures since late September, supporters say, easily on pace to qualify for the November 2010 general election. Richard Lee, a longtime marijuana activist who is behind the measure, says he has raised nearly $1 million to hire professionals to assist volunteers in gathering the signatures.
“Voters are ripping the petitions out of our hands,” Mr. Lee said.
That said, the bids to legalize marijuana are opposed by law enforcement groups across the state and, if successful, would undoubtedly set up a legal showdown with the federal government, which classifies marijuana as an illegal drug.
California was the first state to legalize marijuana for medical purposes, in 1996, but court after court — including the United States Supreme Court — has ruled that the federal government can continue to enforce its ban. Only this month, with the Department of Justice announcement that it would not prosecute users and providers of medical marijuana who obey state law, has that threat subsided.
But federal authorities have also made it clear that their tolerance stops at recreational use. In a memorandum on Oct. 19 outlining the medical marijuana guidelines, Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden said marijuana was “a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime,” adding that “no state can authorize violations of federal law.”
Still, Mr. Lee anticipates spending up to $20 million on a campaign to win passage of his ballot measure in California, raising some of it from the hundreds of already legal medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, which have been recently fighting efforts by Los Angeles city officials to tighten restrictions on their operations.
“It’s a $2 billion industry,” Mr. Lee said of the medical marijuana sales.
Opponents said they are also preparing for a battle next year.
“I fully expect they will qualify,” said John Lovell, a Sacramento lobbyist for several groups of California law enforcement officials that oppose legalization.
Any vote would take place in a state where attitudes toward marijuana border on the schizophrenic. Last year, the state made some 78,500 arrests on felony and misdemeanors related to the drug, up from about 74,000 in 2007, according to the California attorney general.
Seizures of illegal marijuana plants, often grown by Mexican gangs on public lands in forests and parks, hit an all-time high in 2009, and last week, federal authorities announced a series of arrests in the state’s Central Valley, where homes have been converted into “indoor grows.”
At the same time, however, there are also pockets of California where marijuana can seem practically legal already. At least seven California cities have formally declared marijuana a low priority for law enforcement, with ballot measures or legislative actions. In Los Angeles, some 800 to 1,000 dispensaries of medical marijuana are in business, officials say, complete with consultants offering public relations services and “canna-business management.”
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat and author of the legalization bill, said momentum for legalization has built in recent years, especially as the state’s finances have remained sour.
“A lot of people that were initially resistant or even ridiculed it have come aboard,” Mr. Ammiano said.
In Oakland, which passed a tax on medical cannabis sales in July, several people who signed a petition backing Mr. Lee’s initiative said they were motivated in part by the cost of imprisoning drug offenders and the toll of drug-related violence in Mexico.
“Personally I don’t see a way of getting it under control other than legalizing it and taxing it,” said Jim Quinn, 60, a production manager. “We’ve got to get it out of the hands of criminals both domestic and international.”
Mr. Lovell, the law enforcement lobbyist, however, said those arguments paled in comparison to the potential pitfalls of legalization, including people driving under the influence. He also questioned how much net revenue a tax like Mr. Ammiano is proposing would actually raise. “We get revenue from alcohol,” he said. “But there’s way more in social costs than we retain in revenues.”
The recent history of voter-approved drug reform laws in California is not encouraging for supporters of legalization. Last November, voters rejected a proposition that would have increased spending for drug treatment programs and loosened parole and prison requirements for drug offenders.
None of which seems to faze Mr. Lee, 47, a former roadie who founded Oaksterdam University, a medical marijuana trade school in Oakland, in 2007. Mr. Lee says he plans to use the Internet to raise money, as well as tapping out-of state sources for campaign money.
More than anything, however, Mr. Lee said he was banking on a basic shift in people’s attitudes toward the drug.
“For a lot of people,” he said, “it’s just another brand of beer.”
Home
Push to Legalize Marijuana Gains Ground in California
By JESSE McKINLEY
SAN FRANCISCO — These are heady times for advocates of legalized marijuana in California — and only in small part because of the newly relaxed approach of the federal government toward medical marijuana.
State lawmakers are holding a hearing on Wednesday on the effects of a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate the drug — in what would be the first such law in the United States. Tax officials estimate the legislation could bring the struggling state about $1.4 billion a year, and though the bill’s fate in the Legislature is uncertain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would be open to a “robust debate” on the issue.
California voters are also taking up legalization. Three separate initiatives are being circulated for signatures to appear on the ballot next year, all of which would permit adults to possess marijuana for personal use and allow local governments to tax it. Even opponents of legalization suggest that an initiative is likely to qualify for a statewide vote.
“All of us in the movement have had the feeling that we’ve been running into the wind for years,” said James P. Gray, a retired judge in Orange County who has been outspoken in support of legalization. “Now we sense we are running with the wind.”
Proponents of the leading ballot initiative have collected nearly 300,000 signatures since late September, supporters say, easily on pace to qualify for the November 2010 general election. Richard Lee, a longtime marijuana activist who is behind the measure, says he has raised nearly $1 million to hire professionals to assist volunteers in gathering the signatures.
“Voters are ripping the petitions out of our hands,” Mr. Lee said.
That said, the bids to legalize marijuana are opposed by law enforcement groups across the state and, if successful, would undoubtedly set up a legal showdown with the federal government, which classifies marijuana as an illegal drug.
California was the first state to legalize marijuana for medical purposes, in 1996, but court after court — including the United States Supreme Court — has ruled that the federal government can continue to enforce its ban. Only this month, with the Department of Justice announcement that it would not prosecute users and providers of medical marijuana who obey state law, has that threat subsided.
But federal authorities have also made it clear that their tolerance stops at recreational use. In a memorandum on Oct. 19 outlining the medical marijuana guidelines, Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden said marijuana was “a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime,” adding that “no state can authorize violations of federal law.”
Still, Mr. Lee anticipates spending up to $20 million on a campaign to win passage of his ballot measure in California, raising some of it from the hundreds of already legal medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, which have been recently fighting efforts by Los Angeles city officials to tighten restrictions on their operations.
“It’s a $2 billion industry,” Mr. Lee said of the medical marijuana sales.
Opponents said they are also preparing for a battle next year.
“I fully expect they will qualify,” said John Lovell, a Sacramento lobbyist for several groups of California law enforcement officials that oppose legalization.
Any vote would take place in a state where attitudes toward marijuana border on the schizophrenic. Last year, the state made some 78,500 arrests on felony and misdemeanors related to the drug, up from about 74,000 in 2007, according to the California attorney general.
Seizures of illegal marijuana plants, often grown by Mexican gangs on public lands in forests and parks, hit an all-time high in 2009, and last week, federal authorities announced a series of arrests in the state’s Central Valley, where homes have been converted into “indoor grows.”
At the same time, however, there are also pockets of California where marijuana can seem practically legal already. At least seven California cities have formally declared marijuana a low priority for law enforcement, with ballot measures or legislative actions. In Los Angeles, some 800 to 1,000 dispensaries of medical marijuana are in business, officials say, complete with consultants offering public relations services and “canna-business management.”
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat and author of the legalization bill, said momentum for legalization has built in recent years, especially as the state’s finances have remained sour.
“A lot of people that were initially resistant or even ridiculed it have come aboard,” Mr. Ammiano said.
In Oakland, which passed a tax on medical cannabis sales in July, several people who signed a petition backing Mr. Lee’s initiative said they were motivated in part by the cost of imprisoning drug offenders and the toll of drug-related violence in Mexico.
“Personally I don’t see a way of getting it under control other than legalizing it and taxing it,” said Jim Quinn, 60, a production manager. “We’ve got to get it out of the hands of criminals both domestic and international.”
Mr. Lovell, the law enforcement lobbyist, however, said those arguments paled in comparison to the potential pitfalls of legalization, including people driving under the influence. He also questioned how much net revenue a tax like Mr. Ammiano is proposing would actually raise. “We get revenue from alcohol,” he said. “But there’s way more in social costs than we retain in revenues.”
The recent history of voter-approved drug reform laws in California is not encouraging for supporters of legalization. Last November, voters rejected a proposition that would have increased spending for drug treatment programs and loosened parole and prison requirements for drug offenders.
None of which seems to faze Mr. Lee, 47, a former roadie who founded Oaksterdam University, a medical marijuana trade school in Oakland, in 2007. Mr. Lee says he plans to use the Internet to raise money, as well as tapping out-of state sources for campaign money.
More than anything, however, Mr. Lee said he was banking on a basic shift in people’s attitudes toward the drug.
“For a lot of people,” he said, “it’s just another brand of beer.”
Home
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Agassi Admits Using Crystal Meth from New York Times
October 27, 2009
In Book, Agassi Admits Using Crystal Meth
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:43 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Andre Agassi's upcoming autobiography contains an admission that he used crystal meth in 1997 and lied to tennis authorities when he failed a drug test -- a result that was thrown out after he said he ''unwittingly'' took the substance.
According to an excerpt of the autobiography posted on The Times of London Web site Tuesday, the eight-time Grand Slam champion writes that he sent a letter to the ATP tour to explain the positive test, saying he accidentally drank from a soda spiked with meth by his assistant ''Slim.''
''Then I come to the central lie of the letter,'' Agassi writes. ''I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim's spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.
''I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it. The ATP reviewed the case -- and threw it out.''
The ATP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Agassi retired in 2006. Excerpts from his autobiography, which comes out Nov. 9, are being published this week in the London newspaper, as well as Sports Illustrated and People magazines.
In a story posted on People magazine's Web site Tuesday, Agassi says: ''I can't speak to addiction, but a lot of people would say that if you're using anything as an escape, you have a problem.''
According to the Times of London Web site, Agassi writes in his book that ''Slim'' was the person who introduced him to crystal meth, dumping a small pile of powder on the coffee table.
''I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I've just crossed,'' Agassi writes.
''There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I've never felt so alive, so hopeful -- and I've never felt such energy.''
''I'm seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds.''
Among the most successful -- and, without a doubt, one of the most popular -- tennis players in history, Agassi drew attention not just for his play, but also for his outfits, his hairstyles and his relationships with women, including a failed marriage to actress Brooke Shields.
Agassi's first major championship came at Wimbledon in 1992, and he won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But by late 1997, he dropped to No. 141 in the rankings, and he was playing in tennis' equivalent of the minor leagues.
He resuscitated his career in 1998, making the biggest one-year jump into the top 10 in the history of the ATP rankings. The next season, he won the French Open to complete a career Grand Slam, then added a second career U.S. Open title en route to finishing 1999 at No. 1.
In a posting on People's Web site, Agassi says he ''was worried for a moment, but not for long,'' about how fans would react if they found out he used drugs.
''I wore my heart on my sleeve and my emotions were always written on my face. I was actually excited about telling the world the whole story,'' Agassi says.
A writer from SI first revealed the crystal meth reference on a Twitter posting Tuesday.
According to the Times of London excerpt, Agassi was walking through New York's LaGuardia airport when he got the call that he had failed a drug test.
''There is doom in his voice, as if he's going to tell me I'm dying,'' Agassi writes. ''And that's exactly what he tells me.''
''He reminds me that tennis has three classes of drug violation,'' Agassi writes. ''Performance-enhancing drugs ... would constitute a Class 1, he says, which would carry a suspension of two years. However, he adds, crystal meth would seem to be a clear case of Class 2. Recreational drugs.'' That would mean a three-month suspension.
''My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I've achieved, whatever I've worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It's filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.''
In 2007, Martina Hingis tested positive for cocaine after a third-round exit at Wimbledon. She denied using the drug but was banned for two years. In July, Frenchman Richard Gasquet was cleared to resume playing after a 2 1/2-month ban upon persuading the International Tennis Federation's tribunal panel that he inadvertently took cocaine by kissing a woman in a nightclub.
Home
Back to Top Copyright 2009 The Associated Press
In Book, Agassi Admits Using Crystal Meth
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:43 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Andre Agassi's upcoming autobiography contains an admission that he used crystal meth in 1997 and lied to tennis authorities when he failed a drug test -- a result that was thrown out after he said he ''unwittingly'' took the substance.
According to an excerpt of the autobiography posted on The Times of London Web site Tuesday, the eight-time Grand Slam champion writes that he sent a letter to the ATP tour to explain the positive test, saying he accidentally drank from a soda spiked with meth by his assistant ''Slim.''
''Then I come to the central lie of the letter,'' Agassi writes. ''I say that recently I drank accidentally from one of Slim's spiked sodas, unwittingly ingesting his drugs. I ask for understanding and leniency and hastily sign it: Sincerely.
''I feel ashamed, of course. I promise myself that this lie is the end of it. The ATP reviewed the case -- and threw it out.''
The ATP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Agassi retired in 2006. Excerpts from his autobiography, which comes out Nov. 9, are being published this week in the London newspaper, as well as Sports Illustrated and People magazines.
In a story posted on People magazine's Web site Tuesday, Agassi says: ''I can't speak to addiction, but a lot of people would say that if you're using anything as an escape, you have a problem.''
According to the Times of London Web site, Agassi writes in his book that ''Slim'' was the person who introduced him to crystal meth, dumping a small pile of powder on the coffee table.
''I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I've just crossed,'' Agassi writes.
''There is a moment of regret, followed by vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I've never felt so alive, so hopeful -- and I've never felt such energy.''
''I'm seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds.''
Among the most successful -- and, without a doubt, one of the most popular -- tennis players in history, Agassi drew attention not just for his play, but also for his outfits, his hairstyles and his relationships with women, including a failed marriage to actress Brooke Shields.
Agassi's first major championship came at Wimbledon in 1992, and he won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But by late 1997, he dropped to No. 141 in the rankings, and he was playing in tennis' equivalent of the minor leagues.
He resuscitated his career in 1998, making the biggest one-year jump into the top 10 in the history of the ATP rankings. The next season, he won the French Open to complete a career Grand Slam, then added a second career U.S. Open title en route to finishing 1999 at No. 1.
In a posting on People's Web site, Agassi says he ''was worried for a moment, but not for long,'' about how fans would react if they found out he used drugs.
''I wore my heart on my sleeve and my emotions were always written on my face. I was actually excited about telling the world the whole story,'' Agassi says.
A writer from SI first revealed the crystal meth reference on a Twitter posting Tuesday.
According to the Times of London excerpt, Agassi was walking through New York's LaGuardia airport when he got the call that he had failed a drug test.
''There is doom in his voice, as if he's going to tell me I'm dying,'' Agassi writes. ''And that's exactly what he tells me.''
''He reminds me that tennis has three classes of drug violation,'' Agassi writes. ''Performance-enhancing drugs ... would constitute a Class 1, he says, which would carry a suspension of two years. However, he adds, crystal meth would seem to be a clear case of Class 2. Recreational drugs.'' That would mean a three-month suspension.
''My name, my career, everything is now on the line. Whatever I've achieved, whatever I've worked for, might soon mean nothing. Days later I sit in a hard-backed chair, a legal pad in my lap, and write a letter to the ATP. It's filled with lies interwoven with bits of truth.''
In 2007, Martina Hingis tested positive for cocaine after a third-round exit at Wimbledon. She denied using the drug but was banned for two years. In July, Frenchman Richard Gasquet was cleared to resume playing after a 2 1/2-month ban upon persuading the International Tennis Federation's tribunal panel that he inadvertently took cocaine by kissing a woman in a nightclub.
Home
Back to Top Copyright 2009 The Associated Press
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Public Opinion: In Gallup Poll, Support for Legalizing Marijuana Reaches All-Time High, Majority in West
Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Public Opinion: In Gallup Poll, Support for Legalizing Marijuana Reaches All-Time High, Majority in West
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #605, 10/23/09
According to the most recent Gallup poll, 44% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana, while 54% oppose it. The 44% figure is the highest since Gallup began polling on the issue nearly 40 years ago.
In 1970, only 12% of respondents favored legalization. That figure climbed to 28% in 1977, then declined slightly and reached a plateau with support holding at around 25% for the next two decades. But in the past decade, public opinion has begun to shift, with support hitting 34% in 2002, 36% in 2006, and now, 44%.
Conversely, opposition to legalization is now at an all-time low. It was 84% in 1970, 66% in 1977, and around 73% for most of the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton eras. But beginning in about 1996, opposition began to decline, dropping to 62% in 2002, 60% in 2006, and now, 54%.
A related question -- whether marijuana should be legalized and taxed to raise revenues for state governments -- won similar support levels in the Gallup poll. Some 42% of respondents said they would favor such a move in their state, while 56% were opposed. In the West, however, support for tax and legalize has gone over the top; 53% favor such an approach.
Looking at various demographic groups, support for marijuana legalization is highest among self-described liberals, at 78%. Only 26% of conservatives and 46% of moderates supported legalization. Similarly, 54% of Democrats, 49% of independents, and 28% of Republicans supported legalization.
There is also a clear generational divide. Half of those under age 50 support legalization, compared to 45% aged 50 to 64, and only 28% of seniors.
Support for legalization has swollen among certain demographic groups since the last Gallup poll on the issue in 2005. The number in favor of legalization jumped more than 10 points among women (+12), young people (+11), Democrats (+13), liberals (+15), moderates (+11), and residents of the West (+13).
If these rates of increase in support for legalization continue over the medium term, the world as we know may indeed end in 2012.
Public Opinion: In Gallup Poll, Support for Legalizing Marijuana Reaches All-Time High, Majority in West
view
translation
Printer Friendly Version Email this Article
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #605, 10/23/09
According to the most recent Gallup poll, 44% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana, while 54% oppose it. The 44% figure is the highest since Gallup began polling on the issue nearly 40 years ago.
In 1970, only 12% of respondents favored legalization. That figure climbed to 28% in 1977, then declined slightly and reached a plateau with support holding at around 25% for the next two decades. But in the past decade, public opinion has begun to shift, with support hitting 34% in 2002, 36% in 2006, and now, 44%.
Conversely, opposition to legalization is now at an all-time low. It was 84% in 1970, 66% in 1977, and around 73% for most of the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton eras. But beginning in about 1996, opposition began to decline, dropping to 62% in 2002, 60% in 2006, and now, 54%.
A related question -- whether marijuana should be legalized and taxed to raise revenues for state governments -- won similar support levels in the Gallup poll. Some 42% of respondents said they would favor such a move in their state, while 56% were opposed. In the West, however, support for tax and legalize has gone over the top; 53% favor such an approach.
Looking at various demographic groups, support for marijuana legalization is highest among self-described liberals, at 78%. Only 26% of conservatives and 46% of moderates supported legalization. Similarly, 54% of Democrats, 49% of independents, and 28% of Republicans supported legalization.
There is also a clear generational divide. Half of those under age 50 support legalization, compared to 45% aged 50 to 64, and only 28% of seniors.
Support for legalization has swollen among certain demographic groups since the last Gallup poll on the issue in 2005. The number in favor of legalization jumped more than 10 points among women (+12), young people (+11), Democrats (+13), liberals (+15), moderates (+11), and residents of the West (+13).
If these rates of increase in support for legalization continue over the medium term, the world as we know may indeed end in 2012.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
U.S. Won’t Prosecute in States That Allow Medical Marijuana from New York Times
October 20, 2009
By DAVID STOUT and SOLOMON MOORE
WASHINGTON — People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it to them should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said Monday in a directive with far-reaching political and legal implications.
In a memorandum to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that make some allowance for the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the department said that it was committed to the “efficient and rational use” of its resources and that prosecuting patients and distributors who are in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state laws did not meet that standard.
The new stance was hardly an enthusiastic embrace of medical marijuana, or the laws that allow it in some states, but signaled clearly that the administration thought there were more important priorities for prosecutors.
“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement accompanying the memo, “but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal.”
Emphasizing that it would continue to pursue those who use the concept of medical marijuana as a ruse, the department said, “Marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels,” and pursuing the makers and sellers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, will remain a “core priority.”
The new policy was tbe laszThe (sic) politics swirling around marijuana cross ideological lines. For instance, in effectively deferring to the states on some issues involving marijuana, the Obama administration is taking what could be seen as a states’ rights stance, more commonly associated with conservatives. That was a theme that echoed on many conservative and libertarian Internet sites in the wake of Monday’s announcement.
But one prominent conservative, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, criticized the Justice Department’s position, saying it would weaken federal enforcement of drug laws.
“By directing federal law enforcement officers to ignore federal drug laws, the administration is tacitly condoning the use of marijuana in the United States,” said Mr. Smith, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “If we want to win the war on drugs, federal prosecutors have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute all medical marijuana dispensaries and not just those that are merely fronts for illegal marijuana distribution.”
Polls have shown for years that there is widespread public support for making marijuana available to relieve the suffering of people who are very ill. But repeated efforts in Congress to block federal prosecution of medical marijuana have fallen short, and the new policy was a sharp departure from that of the Bush administration, in which the Drug Enforcement Administration raided medical marijuana distributors even if the distributors appeared to be complying with state laws.
The new policy, which reflects positions that Mr. Obama took as a presidential candidate and that Mr. Holder laid out in March, came in a memo from David W. Ogden, the deputy attorney general, to the United States attorneys in the affected states, most notably California.
The White House sought to turn aside any impression that Mr. Obama would like other states to follow the example of the 14 that make some allowance for medical marijuana.
“I’m not going to get into what states should do,” said the president’s chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs.
Mr. Gibbs said the memo to federal prosecutors “simply adds guidelines to a decision that Attorney General Holder talked about in mid-March and has been administration policy since the beginning of this administration in January.”
The guidelines give specific examples of conduct that would causes prosecutors to look at a case involving marijuana even if a user or distributor said it was for medical use. The examples include unlawful possession or use of a firearm, sales to minors and evidence of money laundering activity.
Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Law Reform Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the Justice Department’s move “an enormous step in the right direction and, no doubt, a great relief to the thousands of Americans who benefit from the medical use of marijuana.”
Mr. Boyd predicted that states and cities “will have a strong incentive to create regulated, safe and sensible means of getting marijuana to patients who need it.”
The new policy follows a series of changes, including the appointment of Richard Gil Kerlikowske, a former police chief of Seattle, to be Mr. Obama’s top drug policy adviser.
Medical marijuana thrived in Seattle on Mr. Kerlikowske’s watch, and advocates of more liberal marijuana laws hoped that his appointment to the office, which he assumed in May, signaled the administration’s willingness to decriminalize medical marijuana.
Some federal law enforcement officials are opposed to the administration’s position.
Privately, some federal law enforcement officials complained that medical marijuana and marijuana being smuggled in from Mexico are one and the same, and that the Obama administration has backed away from necessary enforcement of drug laws. Agents from the D.E.A. often work alongside local police officers.
As Mr. Ogden’s memo was being made public, the Web site of the Drug Enforcement Administration outlined its position on medical marijuana: “Smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science — it is not medicine and it is not safe. D.E.A. targets criminals engaged in cultivation and trafficking, not the sick and dying.”
Advocates of medical marijuana say it can reduce chronic pain, nausea and additional symptoms associated with cancer and other serious illnesses. In 1996, California became the first state to make it legal to sell marijuana to people with doctors’ prescriptions. The other states that allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes are Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Solomon Moore contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
By DAVID STOUT and SOLOMON MOORE
WASHINGTON — People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it to them should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said Monday in a directive with far-reaching political and legal implications.
In a memorandum to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that make some allowance for the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the department said that it was committed to the “efficient and rational use” of its resources and that prosecuting patients and distributors who are in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state laws did not meet that standard.
The new stance was hardly an enthusiastic embrace of medical marijuana, or the laws that allow it in some states, but signaled clearly that the administration thought there were more important priorities for prosecutors.
“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement accompanying the memo, “but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal.”
Emphasizing that it would continue to pursue those who use the concept of medical marijuana as a ruse, the department said, “Marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels,” and pursuing the makers and sellers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, will remain a “core priority.”
The new policy was tbe laszThe (sic) politics swirling around marijuana cross ideological lines. For instance, in effectively deferring to the states on some issues involving marijuana, the Obama administration is taking what could be seen as a states’ rights stance, more commonly associated with conservatives. That was a theme that echoed on many conservative and libertarian Internet sites in the wake of Monday’s announcement.
But one prominent conservative, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, criticized the Justice Department’s position, saying it would weaken federal enforcement of drug laws.
“By directing federal law enforcement officers to ignore federal drug laws, the administration is tacitly condoning the use of marijuana in the United States,” said Mr. Smith, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “If we want to win the war on drugs, federal prosecutors have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute all medical marijuana dispensaries and not just those that are merely fronts for illegal marijuana distribution.”
Polls have shown for years that there is widespread public support for making marijuana available to relieve the suffering of people who are very ill. But repeated efforts in Congress to block federal prosecution of medical marijuana have fallen short, and the new policy was a sharp departure from that of the Bush administration, in which the Drug Enforcement Administration raided medical marijuana distributors even if the distributors appeared to be complying with state laws.
The new policy, which reflects positions that Mr. Obama took as a presidential candidate and that Mr. Holder laid out in March, came in a memo from David W. Ogden, the deputy attorney general, to the United States attorneys in the affected states, most notably California.
The White House sought to turn aside any impression that Mr. Obama would like other states to follow the example of the 14 that make some allowance for medical marijuana.
“I’m not going to get into what states should do,” said the president’s chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs.
Mr. Gibbs said the memo to federal prosecutors “simply adds guidelines to a decision that Attorney General Holder talked about in mid-March and has been administration policy since the beginning of this administration in January.”
The guidelines give specific examples of conduct that would causes prosecutors to look at a case involving marijuana even if a user or distributor said it was for medical use. The examples include unlawful possession or use of a firearm, sales to minors and evidence of money laundering activity.
Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Law Reform Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the Justice Department’s move “an enormous step in the right direction and, no doubt, a great relief to the thousands of Americans who benefit from the medical use of marijuana.”
Mr. Boyd predicted that states and cities “will have a strong incentive to create regulated, safe and sensible means of getting marijuana to patients who need it.”
The new policy follows a series of changes, including the appointment of Richard Gil Kerlikowske, a former police chief of Seattle, to be Mr. Obama’s top drug policy adviser.
Medical marijuana thrived in Seattle on Mr. Kerlikowske’s watch, and advocates of more liberal marijuana laws hoped that his appointment to the office, which he assumed in May, signaled the administration’s willingness to decriminalize medical marijuana.
Some federal law enforcement officials are opposed to the administration’s position.
Privately, some federal law enforcement officials complained that medical marijuana and marijuana being smuggled in from Mexico are one and the same, and that the Obama administration has backed away from necessary enforcement of drug laws. Agents from the D.E.A. often work alongside local police officers.
As Mr. Ogden’s memo was being made public, the Web site of the Drug Enforcement Administration outlined its position on medical marijuana: “Smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science — it is not medicine and it is not safe. D.E.A. targets criminals engaged in cultivation and trafficking, not the sick and dying.”
Advocates of medical marijuana say it can reduce chronic pain, nausea and additional symptoms associated with cancer and other serious illnesses. In 1996, California became the first state to make it legal to sell marijuana to people with doctors’ prescriptions. The other states that allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes are Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Solomon Moore contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Texas DA Seeks to Use Seized Funds to Defend Herself in Lawsuit Over Unlawful Seizure of Same Funds
Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Asset Forfeiture: Texas DA Seeks to Use Seized Funds to Defend Herself in Lawsuit Over Unlawful Seizure of Same Funds
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #603, 10/9/09
The Texas district attorney accused of participating in an egregious asset forfeiture scheme in the East Texas town of Tenaha now wants to use the very cash seized to pay for her legal defense in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by victims of the practice. The ACLU of Texas, which, along with the national ACLU, is representing the plaintiffs in the case, filed a brief last Friday with the Texas Attorney General's office seeking to block her from doing so.
Lynda Russell is the district attorney in Shelby County, where Tenaha is located. She is accused of participating in a scheme where Tenaha police pulled over mostly African-American motorists without cause, asked them if they were carrying cash, and if they were, threaten them with being immediately jailed for money laundering or other serious crimes unless they signed over their money to authorities.
Representing a number of victims, attorneys from the ACLU of Texas and the ACLU Racial Justice Project filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in June 2008. According to the suit, more than 140 people, almost all of whom were African-American, turned over their assets to police without cause and under duress between June 2006 and June 2008. If a federal judge agrees that assets were in fact illegally seized, they should be returned to their rightful owners, whose civil rights were violated.
In one case, a mixed race couple, Jennifer Boatwright and Ronald Henderson, were stopped by a Tenaha police officer in April 2007. According to the lawsuit, they were stopped without cause, detained for some time without cause, and asked if they were carrying any cash. When they admitted they had slightly more than $6,000, a district attorney's investigator then seized it, threatening them with arrest for money laundering and the loss of their children if they refused to sign off. There was never any evidence they had committed a crime, and they were never charged with a crime.
The town mayor, the DA, the DA's investigator, the town marshal, and a town constable are all named in the lawsuit. While they claim to have acted legally under Texas asset forfeiture law, the lawsuit argues that "although they were taken under color of state law, their actions constitute abuse of authority." The suit argues that the racially discriminatory pattern of stops and searches violated both the Fourth Amendment proscription of warrantless searches and the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause.
While either the county or the state would normally be expected to pony up for the DA's legal expenses for a lawsuit filed as a result of her performance of her duties, neither has done so. That's why Russell -- with a tin ear for irony -- requested that she be allowed to use the allegedly illegally seized money stolen from motorists. She has asked the state attorney general's office for an opinion on whether using the funds for her defense violates the state's asset forfeiture law.
"It would be completely inappropriate for the district attorney to use assets which are the very subject of litigation charging her with participating in allegedly illegal activity to defend herself against these charges," said Lisa Graybill, legal director at the ACLU of Texas. "Texas has a long history of having its law enforcement officials unconstitutionally target racial minorities in the flawed and failed war on drugs and it is of paramount importance that those officials be held accountable."
"The government must account for the misconduct of officials who operate in its name," said Vanita Gupta, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program, who represented African-American residents of Tulia, TX in high-profile litigation challenging their wrongful convictions on drug charges. "The state of Texas has seen egregious examples of racial profiling that result from poor oversight of criminal justice officials."
The ACLU of Texas is using the Tenaha case to push for asset forfeiture reform in the Lone Star State. One such bill stalled in the state legislature this year. "The misuse of asset forfeiture laws by local officials is exacerbated by inadequate oversight," said Matt Simpson, policy strategist for the group. "The legislature must squarely address these reported civil rights violations via reform of forfeiture laws that strengthen protection against unconstitutional conduct and racial profiling."
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Drug War Issues Race - Driving - Civil Rights - Search and Seizure - Profiling - Asset Forfeiture
Consequences of Prohibition Government Corruption
Politics & Advocacy State & Local Executive Branches
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Asset Forfeiture: Texas DA Seeks to Use Seized Funds to Defend Herself in Lawsuit Over Unlawful Seizure of Same Funds
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #603, 10/9/09
The Texas district attorney accused of participating in an egregious asset forfeiture scheme in the East Texas town of Tenaha now wants to use the very cash seized to pay for her legal defense in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by victims of the practice. The ACLU of Texas, which, along with the national ACLU, is representing the plaintiffs in the case, filed a brief last Friday with the Texas Attorney General's office seeking to block her from doing so.
Lynda Russell is the district attorney in Shelby County, where Tenaha is located. She is accused of participating in a scheme where Tenaha police pulled over mostly African-American motorists without cause, asked them if they were carrying cash, and if they were, threaten them with being immediately jailed for money laundering or other serious crimes unless they signed over their money to authorities.
Representing a number of victims, attorneys from the ACLU of Texas and the ACLU Racial Justice Project filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in June 2008. According to the suit, more than 140 people, almost all of whom were African-American, turned over their assets to police without cause and under duress between June 2006 and June 2008. If a federal judge agrees that assets were in fact illegally seized, they should be returned to their rightful owners, whose civil rights were violated.
In one case, a mixed race couple, Jennifer Boatwright and Ronald Henderson, were stopped by a Tenaha police officer in April 2007. According to the lawsuit, they were stopped without cause, detained for some time without cause, and asked if they were carrying any cash. When they admitted they had slightly more than $6,000, a district attorney's investigator then seized it, threatening them with arrest for money laundering and the loss of their children if they refused to sign off. There was never any evidence they had committed a crime, and they were never charged with a crime.
The town mayor, the DA, the DA's investigator, the town marshal, and a town constable are all named in the lawsuit. While they claim to have acted legally under Texas asset forfeiture law, the lawsuit argues that "although they were taken under color of state law, their actions constitute abuse of authority." The suit argues that the racially discriminatory pattern of stops and searches violated both the Fourth Amendment proscription of warrantless searches and the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause.
While either the county or the state would normally be expected to pony up for the DA's legal expenses for a lawsuit filed as a result of her performance of her duties, neither has done so. That's why Russell -- with a tin ear for irony -- requested that she be allowed to use the allegedly illegally seized money stolen from motorists. She has asked the state attorney general's office for an opinion on whether using the funds for her defense violates the state's asset forfeiture law.
"It would be completely inappropriate for the district attorney to use assets which are the very subject of litigation charging her with participating in allegedly illegal activity to defend herself against these charges," said Lisa Graybill, legal director at the ACLU of Texas. "Texas has a long history of having its law enforcement officials unconstitutionally target racial minorities in the flawed and failed war on drugs and it is of paramount importance that those officials be held accountable."
"The government must account for the misconduct of officials who operate in its name," said Vanita Gupta, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program, who represented African-American residents of Tulia, TX in high-profile litigation challenging their wrongful convictions on drug charges. "The state of Texas has seen egregious examples of racial profiling that result from poor oversight of criminal justice officials."
The ACLU of Texas is using the Tenaha case to push for asset forfeiture reform in the Lone Star State. One such bill stalled in the state legislature this year. "The misuse of asset forfeiture laws by local officials is exacerbated by inadequate oversight," said Matt Simpson, policy strategist for the group. "The legislature must squarely address these reported civil rights violations via reform of forfeiture laws that strengthen protection against unconstitutional conduct and racial profiling."
Bookmark/Search this post with: digg reddit
Drug War Issues Race - Driving - Civil Rights - Search and Seizure - Profiling - Asset Forfeiture
Consequences of Prohibition Government Corruption
Politics & Advocacy State & Local Executive Branches
email this page
<- previous article in this issue next article in this issue ->
Monday, September 21, 2009
Read William Martin's article in the October Issue of Texas Monthly!
Texas High Ways
Sign by Roadhouse Relics
Why the unlikeliest of states—ours—should legalize marijuana.
by William Martin http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2009-10-01/feature4
Sign by Roadhouse Relics
Why the unlikeliest of states—ours—should legalize marijuana.
by William Martin http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2009-10-01/feature4
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Drug Arrests Decline Slightly in 2008
Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter
Feature: Marijuana Arrests, All Drug Arrests Declined Slightly in 2008, FBI Reports
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from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #601, 9/18/09
The number of people arrested for drug offenses in the United States declined slightly last year, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. And for the first time since 2002, the number of people arrested on marijuana charges also declined. The number of arrests for all drug offenses declined from 1,841,182 in 2007 to 1,702,537 last year, while the number of people arrested on marijuana charges dropped from 872,721 in 2007 to 847,864 last year.
( See the table from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/arrests/ )
More people were arrested for drug offenses last year than live in the cities of Phoenix (pop. 1.55 million) or Philadelphia (pop. 1.45 million). More people were arrested for marijuana offenses than live in the cities of Jacksonville (pop. 805,000) or San Francisco (pop. 764,000). Based on the overall drug arrest figures, somebody got busted for dope every 18 seconds in 2008, and somebody got busted for pot every 37 seconds.
Last year, marijuana arrests accounted for nearly half -- 49.8% -- of all drug arrests, up slightly from the 47% in 2007. The vast majority of marijuana arrests -- 89% -- were for possession only, meaning that more than three-quarters of a million Americans got busted last year not for drug trafficking or manufacture, but as nothing more than pot consumers. In two regions of the country, the South and the Midwest, simple marijuana possession arrests accounted for more than half of all drug arrests.
Similarly, when all drug arrests are tabulated, possession arrests constituted 83.3% of the total. That means out of the 1.7 million total drug arrests, only about 300,000 were for "drug dealing" or manufacture, and 93,640 of those were for marijuana, which includes people growing even one plant or for medical reasons.
While last year's pot bust numbers represent a 3% decline from 2007, the 2008 numbers are still the second highest annual toll on record. Marijuana arrests stood at about 300,000 in 1991 before climbing sharply during the Clinton administration to more than 700,000 by 2000. During the Bush administration, annual pot arrests continued to climb, but more slowly, going over 800,000 in 2006 and reaching the all-time high of more than 872,000 in 2007.
While the trend over the past two decades has been upwards, this isn't the first year that marijuana arrests have declined over the previous year. Similar blips have happened five times since 1990.
The number of drug arrests in 2008 was about three times the number of people arrested for all violent crimes (595,000) and greater than the number of people arrested for all property crimes (1.68 million).
Defenders of the status quo eager to downplay the consequences of drug prohibition are wont to argue that many arrests aren't really arrests -- some people are ticketed or cited and released -- or that hardly anybody goes to jail, especially for marijuana. There is a small degree of truth in each argument, but being arrested on a drug charge, even a marijuana possession charge, carries serious consequences for the arrestee.
People arrested face legal fees, fines, and, quite possibly, time behind bars, even for marijuana offenses. Upon conviction, they also face a raft of collateral consequences ranging from loss of access to student loans, public housing, and other federal benefits to loss of (or inability to obtain) professional licenses, problems with employment, and loss of children to state child welfare agencies.
The 2008 arrest figures come just days after the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that the number of adult marijuana smokers increased from 22 million in 2007 to 22.5 million last year. The number of Americans over age 12 who admitted ever smoking marijuana was also at an all-time, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of the population. Last year, 41%, or more than 102 million Americans said they had tried marijuana.
Drug reformers were quick to use the arrest figures to call for change. "In our current economic climate, we simply cannot afford to keep arresting more than three people every minute in the failed 'war on drugs,'" said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Cole also warned of the collateral consequences of a drug arrest. "You can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction," he said.
The pot people, revved up by a seeming seismic shift in popular attitudes now underway, were also quick on the attack. "Federal statistics released just last week indicate that larger percentages of Americans are using cannabis at the same time that police are arresting a near-record number of Americans for pot-related offenses," said Allen St. Pierre, head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "Present enforcement policies are costing American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and having no impact on marijuana availability or marijuana use in this country. It is time to end this failed policy and replace prohibition with a policy of marijuana regulation, taxation, and education."
"This slight dip in the number of marijuana arrests provides a small amount of relief to the tens of millions of American marijuana consumers who have been under attack by their own government for decades," said Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia. "It's time to stop wasting billions of tax dollars criminalizing responsible Americans for using a substance that's safer than alcohol, and to put an end to policies that simply hand this massive consumer market to unregulated criminals."
Do the slight declines in marijuana arrests or overall drug arrests mean that change is around the corner or that policing policies are becoming more enlightened? The answer is "no," said Eric Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.
"The declines are so slight as to be almost insignificant," said Sterling. "What we do know is that in various law enforcement agencies around the country, they've been laying off cops. Chiefs have been getting orders from mayors and county executives to cut overtime. There are 10,000 different law enforcement agencies, and they're all facing financial trouble. These kinds of pressures reduce the number of police hours that can be devoted to these kinds of cases," he said.
The small declines in drug arrests do not represent any serious policy change, Sterling said. "If there was any significant change in policies, you wouldn't see a minor dip. If we saw a drop of a third, that would tell us there is a change in policy, but anyone who looks at these numbers and thinks they represent change is grasping at straws."
Drug prohibition mindlessly grinds on, chewing up and spitting out more than a million and a half Americans each year. It may have suffered a few hiccups because of the country's financial woes, but there is as yet no sign that anything has really changed.
PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet) is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you.Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Feature: Marijuana Arrests, All Drug Arrests Declined Slightly in 2008, FBI Reports
view
translation
Printer Friendly Version Email this Article
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #601, 9/18/09
The number of people arrested for drug offenses in the United States declined slightly last year, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. And for the first time since 2002, the number of people arrested on marijuana charges also declined. The number of arrests for all drug offenses declined from 1,841,182 in 2007 to 1,702,537 last year, while the number of people arrested on marijuana charges dropped from 872,721 in 2007 to 847,864 last year.
( See the table from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/arrests/ )
More people were arrested for drug offenses last year than live in the cities of Phoenix (pop. 1.55 million) or Philadelphia (pop. 1.45 million). More people were arrested for marijuana offenses than live in the cities of Jacksonville (pop. 805,000) or San Francisco (pop. 764,000). Based on the overall drug arrest figures, somebody got busted for dope every 18 seconds in 2008, and somebody got busted for pot every 37 seconds.
Last year, marijuana arrests accounted for nearly half -- 49.8% -- of all drug arrests, up slightly from the 47% in 2007. The vast majority of marijuana arrests -- 89% -- were for possession only, meaning that more than three-quarters of a million Americans got busted last year not for drug trafficking or manufacture, but as nothing more than pot consumers. In two regions of the country, the South and the Midwest, simple marijuana possession arrests accounted for more than half of all drug arrests.
Similarly, when all drug arrests are tabulated, possession arrests constituted 83.3% of the total. That means out of the 1.7 million total drug arrests, only about 300,000 were for "drug dealing" or manufacture, and 93,640 of those were for marijuana, which includes people growing even one plant or for medical reasons.
While last year's pot bust numbers represent a 3% decline from 2007, the 2008 numbers are still the second highest annual toll on record. Marijuana arrests stood at about 300,000 in 1991 before climbing sharply during the Clinton administration to more than 700,000 by 2000. During the Bush administration, annual pot arrests continued to climb, but more slowly, going over 800,000 in 2006 and reaching the all-time high of more than 872,000 in 2007.
While the trend over the past two decades has been upwards, this isn't the first year that marijuana arrests have declined over the previous year. Similar blips have happened five times since 1990.
The number of drug arrests in 2008 was about three times the number of people arrested for all violent crimes (595,000) and greater than the number of people arrested for all property crimes (1.68 million).
Defenders of the status quo eager to downplay the consequences of drug prohibition are wont to argue that many arrests aren't really arrests -- some people are ticketed or cited and released -- or that hardly anybody goes to jail, especially for marijuana. There is a small degree of truth in each argument, but being arrested on a drug charge, even a marijuana possession charge, carries serious consequences for the arrestee.
People arrested face legal fees, fines, and, quite possibly, time behind bars, even for marijuana offenses. Upon conviction, they also face a raft of collateral consequences ranging from loss of access to student loans, public housing, and other federal benefits to loss of (or inability to obtain) professional licenses, problems with employment, and loss of children to state child welfare agencies.
The 2008 arrest figures come just days after the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that the number of adult marijuana smokers increased from 22 million in 2007 to 22.5 million last year. The number of Americans over age 12 who admitted ever smoking marijuana was also at an all-time, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of the population. Last year, 41%, or more than 102 million Americans said they had tried marijuana.
Drug reformers were quick to use the arrest figures to call for change. "In our current economic climate, we simply cannot afford to keep arresting more than three people every minute in the failed 'war on drugs,'" said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Cole also warned of the collateral consequences of a drug arrest. "You can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction," he said.
The pot people, revved up by a seeming seismic shift in popular attitudes now underway, were also quick on the attack. "Federal statistics released just last week indicate that larger percentages of Americans are using cannabis at the same time that police are arresting a near-record number of Americans for pot-related offenses," said Allen St. Pierre, head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "Present enforcement policies are costing American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and having no impact on marijuana availability or marijuana use in this country. It is time to end this failed policy and replace prohibition with a policy of marijuana regulation, taxation, and education."
"This slight dip in the number of marijuana arrests provides a small amount of relief to the tens of millions of American marijuana consumers who have been under attack by their own government for decades," said Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia. "It's time to stop wasting billions of tax dollars criminalizing responsible Americans for using a substance that's safer than alcohol, and to put an end to policies that simply hand this massive consumer market to unregulated criminals."
Do the slight declines in marijuana arrests or overall drug arrests mean that change is around the corner or that policing policies are becoming more enlightened? The answer is "no," said Eric Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.
"The declines are so slight as to be almost insignificant," said Sterling. "What we do know is that in various law enforcement agencies around the country, they've been laying off cops. Chiefs have been getting orders from mayors and county executives to cut overtime. There are 10,000 different law enforcement agencies, and they're all facing financial trouble. These kinds of pressures reduce the number of police hours that can be devoted to these kinds of cases," he said.
The small declines in drug arrests do not represent any serious policy change, Sterling said. "If there was any significant change in policies, you wouldn't see a minor dip. If we saw a drop of a third, that would tell us there is a change in policy, but anyone who looks at these numbers and thinks they represent change is grasping at straws."
Drug prohibition mindlessly grinds on, chewing up and spitting out more than a million and a half Americans each year. It may have suffered a few hiccups because of the country's financial woes, but there is as yet no sign that anything has really changed.
PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet) is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you.Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
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