Once in a great while a writer at the opposite end of the political spectrum gets you to look at a familiar set of facts in a new way. Disconcerting as it is, you can feel your foundation shift as your mind struggles to reconcile this new point of view with long held beliefs. Michelle Alexander has done just that in her book, The New Jim Crow.
A liberal ideologue with impeccable leftist credentials, Alexander was Director of the Racial Justice Project at the American Civil Liberties Union before moving on to an appointment in Race and Ethnicity studies at Ohio State University. Her thesis pushes disparate-impact logic to an extreme, ascribing deeply racist motives to a society that has traveled a very long way since the system of legal and cultural discrimination known as Jim Crow stained the land.
Yet there is no denying that if your goal were to consign African Americans to a permanent underclass—one which the rest of us would be culturally and legally permitted to discriminate against in employment, housing, voting rights, and government benefits—the war on drugs would be a great way to do it.
México Unido Contra la Delincuencia A.C., es una asociación civil nolucrativa, laica y apartidista.
Nuestra visión es tener una sociedad que pueda vivir y progresar conseguridad y tranquilidad en un marco en que prevalezca el Estado dederecho, con ciudadanos comprometidos con México, conscientes de su responsabilidad social, participativos y que exijan a las autoridades el cumplimiento de la ley; además de autoridades e instituciones profesionales,honestas y efectivas en los ámbitos de la seguridad y la justicia.
Today, members of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (CDPC) released their foundational paper on drug policy reform outlining the Coalition’s vision and plans for creating a new drug policy for Canada.
The paper, Changing the Frame: A New Approach to Drug Policy in Canada, also calls on the Federal Government and the Senate to take a giant step back from Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, and rethink their approach to Canada’s drug policies for the sake of all Canadians.
“The research is in. It is clear that the ‘war on drugs’ approach of prohibition, criminalization and incarceration does not work to reduce harms associated with substance use in Canada. Bill C-10 will only exacerbate them, taking us further down a failing path. It is time for a principled, evidence-driven, pragmatic and humane reform of our drug laws and policies,” said Donald MacPherson, Director of the Coalition.
The CDPC is a new national organization of public health officials, researchers, front-line harm reduction and treatment providers, HIV/AIDS service organizations and people who use drugs who are seeking to engage communities to help chart a new direction.
“We need to acknowledge the limits of the current approach and that the criminal law deflects attention from getting to the heart of why some people use drugs in a way that causes harm to themselves and to their families and communities. The CDPC strives for a more inclusive society,” said Coalition Chair, Lynne Belle-Isle. “We want to engage Canadians in finding new and innovative solutions to a problem that affects us all.”
The Coalition held its first two of their planned series of cross-country community dialogues in Vancouver and Edmonton in the fall of 2011. The group is urging broad base citizen participation to explore ideas for reform of Canada’s laws and policies on currently illegal drugs.
Quebec Conservative Senator Pierre Claude Nolin also indicated his support for the work of the Coalition. “The CDPC’s policy paper and leadership on drug policy reform is an important step forward in engaging Canadians in the process of modernizing our drug policies and legislation,” said Nolin. Senator Nolin strongly opposes the passing of the Safe Streets and Communities Act particularly because it supports continued prohibition of cannabis and further criminalization of young cannabis users.
To read a copy of Changing the Frame: A new approach to drug policy in Canada, please visit our website, www.drugpolicy.ca, follow our coverage of the Crime Bill C-10 Hearings here: www.drugpolicy.ca/blog or join the conversation on our Facebook page and follow the latest related news on Twitter @CanDrugPolicy.
A new study reported in Annals of Epidemiology finds that, contrary to drug czar Gil Kerlikowske’s warnings, passage of medical marijuana laws is not associated with increases in adolescent pot smoking. Analyzing data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, researchers at McGill University found that teenagers in states that enact such laws are more apt to smoke pot, but that is because of pre-existing differences. It seems “states with higher use are more likely to enact laws.” The researchers found little evidence that allowing patients to use marijuana as a medicine makes teenagers more likely to use it recreationally. “If anything,” they write, “our estimates suggest that reported adolescent marijuana use may actually decrease after passing MMLs [medical marijuana laws].” They say such an effect “could be plausibly explained by social desirability bias or greater concern about enforcement of recreational marijuana use among adolescents after the passage of laws.” Evidently Kerlikowske is wrong to worry that linking a drug to cancer and AIDS patients makes it seem cooler to the kids.
These results are consistent with the conclusions of reports from the Marijuana Policy Project and the Institute for the Study of Labor, both of which found no increase in adolescent use attributable to medical marijuana laws. The latter study did, however, find an increase in adult consumption, which was associated with a decline in traffic fatalities.
Low-level arrests for marijuana possession in New York City increased for the seventh straight year in 2011, according to a study released Wednesday, despite a September memorandum from the police commissioner that officers should not arrest those with marijuana unless they have the drugs in plain view.
Though arrests dropped significantly after Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s memorandum, an increase of 6 percent during the first eight months of the year more than offset the decline, according to the analysis, conducted by a Queens College sociology professor and released by the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group critical of police marijuana-arrest policies.
The year-end arrest total was 50,684, up 0.6 percent from 2010, the study found, constituting more arrests than in the entire 19-year period 1978 to 1996. Marijuana possession was once again the largest arrest category in the city last year, and the arrests cost the city about $75 million, said Harry Levine, the sociologist who did the analysis.
There seems to be little sense in which risks people find praiseworthy, and which we condemn, writes Dan Gardner
Last week, a physicians’ group called on governments to make helmets mandatory for both children and adults on ski slopes. Lots of people support that. They feel that skiers should not be permitted to decide for themselves whether to wear a helmet because skiing without one is too dangerous. Two days later, Sarah Burke, a champion “superpipe” skier, died as a result of injuries sustained in competition. Burke was almost universally praised as a courageous and talented athlete who died doing what she loved.
Does that make sense?
Maybe it does. I don’t know. The question isn’t rhetorical.
Risk is everywhere, always, which means we are constantly drawing lines, whether we are aware of it or not. We draw lines between risks that we are willing to personally engage and those we will leave to others. We draw lines between risk-taking that is praiseworthy and that which is foolish, between risks that should be promoted and encouraged and those that should not. We draw lines between what people should be free to decide for themselves and what should be regulated, restricted, or even banned.
But we seldom compare the lines we draw and ask if, in juxtaposition, they make sense.
My wife Jodie Emery and I both receive thousands of letters and inquiries with impassioned pleas that read: “I want to do something to make a difference. I want to legalize marijuana. What can I do? Can you advise or help me start? Where do I begin?” This is a question, without rival, that we hear most often.
It comes mostly from Americans and Canadians, but I have received the same question from India, Australia, Europe, the Philippines, Japan, and all over the world. It is a universal desire shared by many people in the cannabis culture the planet over.
If all these millions of people, largely high school and college students, could be harnessed into productive purpose, it would be a huge political force indeed! But most people who consume cannabis and believe in its worth still do nothing to advance our cause in any meaningful way.
