-
-
DEA acting administrator Michele Leonhart has overseen dozens of medical marijuana raids and blocked scientific research. Now she’s denying veterans medical marijuana, but the Senate has the power to stop her. Urge the Senate to demand a new DEA administrator.
-
For Immediate Release: June 4, 2010
Canadians for Safe Access Denounce Police Raids of Medical Cannabis
DispensariesMedical cannabis dispensaries, also know as compassion clubs, have
played a vital role supplying safe access to cannabis for the critically
and chronically ill in Canada for over 12 years. These organizations
provide access to a variety of high quality cannabis strains and
preparations that can effectively alleviate pain, muscle spasms, nausea,
anxiety, and other serious symptoms. Compassion clubs are also at the
forefront of academic peer-reviewed research on medical cannabis in Canada.The services provided by compassion clubs have been appreciated by their
patients, accepted by their communities and municipalities, lauded by a
Special Senate committee, and upheld in various court rooms across the
country. -
By Evan Wood, Special to CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Evan Wood: Scores killed in Jamaica in attempt to nab suspected drug lord
* War on drugs has created a violent underground with billions to be made, Wood says
* Thousands of people die and gangs kill for profits, yet drugs get more plentiful, he writes
* Wood: Scientific, health-based approach instead of criminal approach works elsewhere
Editor’s note: Evan Wood is the founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy; the director of the Urban Health Program at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and associate professor in the Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia.
(CNN) — The news of intense drug-related violence out of Jamaica is shocking and dreadful but entirely predictable. Wherever the war on drugs touches down, death and destruction result. A recent target is Kingston, Jamaica.
When law enforcement attempted to smoke out Christopher “Dudus” Coke, wanted in the U.S. for conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine and to traffic in firearms, scores of people died in the urban warfare. The death toll reached 73 civilians as Jamaicans were caught in the crossfire between police, soldiers and armed thugs.
-
By Mac McClelland, Mother Jones
Sigh. This special report from Feet in 2 Worlds just in:
Federal immigration officials have been visiting command centers on the Gulf Coast to check the immigration status of response workers hired by BP and its contractors to clean up the immense oil spill.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Louisiana confirmed that its agents had visited two large command centers—which are staging areas for the response efforts and are sealed off to the public—to verify that the workers there were legal residents.
“We visited just to ensure that people who are legally here can compete for those jobs—those people who are having so many problems,” said Temple H. Black, a spokesman for ICE in Louisiana.
-
from The Cutting Edge, June 7th 2010
Two prevailing narratives have emerged in the American discourse over Mexico’s plague of drug violence. On the one hand, there are those who laud President Calderón’s hard-line anti-drug crusade while blaming Mexico’s plight entirely on Mexicans – on their “record of corrupt, weak and incompetent governance,” or on their “ineffective criminal justice system.” Then there is the more enlightened version of the tale, which similarly infantilizes Mexicans while at least conceding that the demand for drugs in the United States, along with private weapons sales in border states, are at least partly responsible for the country’s elevated level of drug violence.
Read Full Story: http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=12254
-
Drug Policy Question of the Week – 6-6-10
As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 6-6-10. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/2927
Question of the Week: What makes drug policy a human rights issue?
Let’s first count the numbers. In its “Prisoners in 2008” report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that the number of inmates in federal, state, and local prisons or jails totaled 2.3 million in 2008. Of the 1.3 million inmates held solely under state jurisdiction, roughly 20% or 266,000 were incarcerated because of drug sentences, and of those prisoners, a remarkable two thirds or 173,000 were black or Hispanic.
Despite the punishment of prison, those processed through the criminal justice system in the United States may also lose a fundamental right supposedly accorded to all citizens – the right to vote. A March 2010 report from the Sentencing Project estimated that,
“5.3 million Americans, or one in forty-one adults, have currently or permanently lost their voting rights as a result of a felony conviction.”
The Sentencing Project predicts,
“Given current rates of incarceration, three in ten of the next generation of black men can expect to be disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime. In states that disenfranchise ex-offenders, as many as 40% of black men may permanently lose their right to vote.”
The 2010 report, “Death Penalty for Drug Offences,” from the International Harm Reduction Association examined another important human rights issue. The report placed the United States among the 58 countries worldwide that maintain laws prescribing the death penalty for drug offences. The IHRA stated that in some countries,
“drug offenders make up a significant portion – if not the outright majority – of those executed each year.”
The IHRA concluded,
“The death penalty for drug offences is an issue of considerable human rights concern, one demanding the attention of abolitionists, harm reductionists and drug policy reformers alike.”
These facts and others like them come from the Prisons and Jails and the Civil Rights chapters of Drug War Facts.
-
LETTER OF THE WEEK
ALLOW POT FOR PTSD
The Veterans Affairs Department recently adopted a policy prohibiting its physicians from recommending medical marijuana to their patients.
Overwhelming scientific evidence has already proved marijuana’s safety and efficacy for treating conditions like chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that afflicts nearly one in five Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Marijuana, moreover, carries none of the risks associated with prescription drugs used to treat PTSD, which have been responsible for the tragic overdose deaths of current conflict veterans.
VA claims the ban is primarily a response to threats from the Drug Enforcement Administration to prosecute VA doctors who recommend medical marijuana, even though civilian doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients are not subject to arrest.
Veterans and advocates are urging VA to stand up to the DEA’s harassment of veterans and their doctors.
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, President, The New School
Jason Flom, Board of Directors, Drug Policy Alliance, New York City
Source: Federal Times
Pubdate: Mon, 31 May 2010
-
Drug Policy Question of the Week – 5-25-10
As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 5-25-10. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/2912
Question of the Week: Is the use of paramilitary SWAT raids in drug enforcement effective?
First, let’s count the numbers. The Office of National Drug Control Policy noted in its fiscal year 2010 Budget Summary that,
“For FY 2007, … there were almost 620 HIDTA [High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas] initiatives.”
The ONDCP said that these
“HIDTA initiatives … seized $673 million in cash, and $203 million in noncash assets from drug traffickers.” And “These initiatives identified more than 7,300 DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] operating in their areas.”
SWAT units are often integrated into HIDTA initiatives.
Rodney Balko found in his 2006 Cato Institute analysis that
“these increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.”
Further, Balko countered that the seizure of cash and assets, called forfeiture, cause
“police officials [to] feel increasing pressure to send SWAT teams out on drug assignments, where the assets seized come back to the department and can help offset the costs of having a SWAT team in the first place.”
So, despite disrupting drug traffickers and seizing of hundreds of millions of assets, often needed to fund the SWAT teams themselves, HIDTA still identified over seven thousand drug trafficking organizations. Sound effective?
Further, a new report by the International Center for Science in Drug Policy reviewed the scientific evidence concerning this approach to drug law enforcement and confirmed that it,
“contributes to gun violence and high homicide rates and that increasingly sophisticated methods of disrupting organizations involved in drug distribution could unintentionally increase violence.”
Possibly, violence begets violence?
These facts and others like them come from the Drug Interdiction Chapter of Drug War Facts.
