• Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 11-21-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 11-21-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3639

    Question of the Week: What are mandatory minimum sentences?

    As described by the Sentencing Project,

    “Along with the stepped-up pace of arrests in the 1980s, legislatures throughout the country adopted harsher sentencing laws in regard to drug offenses. The federal system, in particular, led the way with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and … of 1988. Among a number of provisions, these laws created a host of severe mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses and affected the calibration of the federal Sentencing Guidelines, which were being formulated simultaneous to these statutory changes. The result of these developments was to remove discretion from the sentencing judge to consider the range of factors pertaining to the individual and the offense that would normally be an integral aspect of the sentencing process, thereby increasing the number of individuals in federal court exposed to a term of incarceration for a drug offense.”

    In its recent report to Congress, the United States Sentencing Commission contended that,

    “Sentencing data and interviews with prosecutors and defense attorneys indicate that mandatory minimum penalties that are considered excessively severe tend to be applied inconsistently.”

    The other unintended consequences of mandatory minimum penalties were enumerated by The Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing to include,

    “significant increases in the costs of corrections due to longer prison terms and an increasing prison population; removal from consideration of other sentencing options that may prove to be less costly and/or more effective than mandatory incarceration; and Impact on … pleas or verdicts and offender eligibility for rehabilitation programs and early release.”

    The Commission concluded,

    “Addressing the growth in the state prison population, particularly involving drug-related offenders, requires systemic change.”

    These facts and others like them can be found in the Mandatory Minimum Sentencing chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Get Busted for Marijuana; Work as a Police Informant; Get Killed

    By Tony Newman,

    No one has ever died from smoking marijuana. But getting busted with a small amount of marijuana has led to countless tragic deaths.

    This week, Shelley Hilliard, a 19-year-old woman from Detroit, was killed after working as a police informant. On October 20, Hilliard was arrested for a small amount of marijuana. The police offered her a way out: She could set up a drug deal. She called a drug dealer and said she had someone who wanted to buy $335 of cocaine and marijuana. When the dealer showed up he was arrested. The dealer was released, and three days later Hilliard was found dead in the streets. The dealer has been charged with murder.

    Hilliard tragic death brings back memories of Rachel Hoffman, the 23-year-old, Florida State graduate from Tallahassee who also worked as an informant after she was busted with a small amount of marijuana and Ecstasy. Hoffman was sent alone on a “buy and bust” and was given $13,000 to buy Ecstasy, cocaine and a gun. The men shot Hoffman five times, stole her car and credit card, and dumped her body into a ditch. This week Tallahassee approved a $2.6 million settlement with Rachel’s parents.

    These two women should still be with us on this earth, but were instead pawns in an unwinnable drug war that led to their violent deaths.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    LEAP visits Supervised Injection Site

    LEAP’s Executive Director, Neill Franklin, visits Insite in Vancouver, where vulnerable people can meet the chemical part of their addiction in a legal, regulated environment. Witness a working model of the benefits of moving away from the criminalization of drug abuse.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Frontline: Opium Brides

    The unexpected collateral damage of the counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan.

    Najibullah Quraishi journeys deep into the Afghan countryside to reveal the deadly bargain local farm families have been forced to make with drug smugglers in order to survive.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Champion of Pain Relief, Siobhan Reynolds Dead in Plane Crash

    All of us are irreplaceable to someone—but few are irreplaceable in the public sphere. Siobhan Reynolds, 50, founder of the Pain Relief Network, who died in a plane crash Christmas Eve, was the exception. She tirelessly, compassionately and at huge financial and emotional cost to herself, worked to debunk myths about opioid treatment of chronic pain that continue to emerge even now.

    The aspiring documentary filmmaker and mother of one was moved to activism by the overwhelming chronic pain suffered by her husband. Further spurred by learning that her son had inherited the same genetic disease, Reynolds was relentless.

    Why, she asked, when opioids can help treat chronic pain, are they frequently only available to the dying—but not if your agony will last years? Why, when addiction to opioids is actually rare, do we treat them as though everyone who takes these drugs is likely to get instantly hooked? And why do we seem to see addiction—even in the dying— as a worse side effect than agony or even death?

    To answer these questions, she educated herself in the intricacies of pharmacology, public policy, medicine and law. A master at simplifying complex stories for the media, Reynolds then used every means at her disposal to bring what she found to public attention.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Congress to Restore Federal Syringe Exchange Funding Ban

    Ban on Allowing States to Use HIV Prevention Money on Life-Saving Syringe Programs was Overturned in 2009 After 20-Year Struggle

    Reinstatement of Ban will Lead to Thousands of New HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C Cases Annually

    As part of the 2012 spending package being voted on today, Congress is restoring a ban on using federal funding for syringe exchange programs that reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and other infectious diseases. The ban, enacted in the 1980s and repealed in 2009, was largely responsible for hundreds of thousands of Americans contracting HIV/AIDS directly or indirectly from the sharing of used syringes. Advocates warn that restoring the ban will result in thousands of Americans contracting HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C or other infectious diseases next year alone.

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Count the Costs

    By George Murkin

    Far from eliminating drug use and the illicit trade, prohibition has inadvertently fuelled the development of the world’s largest illegal commodities market – a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars, controlled solely by criminal profiteers. Produced in collaboration with project supporters Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Release, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy and Harm Reduction International, the latest Count the Costs briefing outlines how this illicit, unregulated market generates:

    Organised crime
    Street crime
    Mass incarceration
    Violent crime
    Crimes perpetrated by governments/states
    Vast economic costs in terms of drug war-related enforcement

    The briefing will form a key part of our outreach to mainstream NGOs working in the criminal justice sector, building on the endorsements Count the Costs has already received from organisations such as the Howard League for Penal Reform and Make Justice Work.