Drug WarRant

Kevin Sabet has another OpEd as part of the New York Times Room for Debate: How to Treat the Epidemic

Second, our governments must lead a more coordinated and vigorous attack on this problem.

Our governments’ coordinated and vigorous attack is what got us into this mess.

Finally, industry has a part to play in this too. The formulation of drugs that cannot be abused (yes, “abuse-deterrent” drugs are possible)

Whoa. That sound creepily like adding methyl alcohol to alcohol in prohibition to poison people who used it recreationally, or like adding acetaminophen to pain pills to destroy people’s livers. Yeah, let’s save people by killing them.

It’s not like the others in the Room for Debate group are much better (see links on the left of Sabet’s article). Linda Simoni-Wastila advocates a national monitoring program even without any evidence of effectiveness. Andrew Kolodny thinks patients in pain should be given less pain medication and just suffer through it. Jonathan Caulkins says absolutely nothing in four paragraphs.

I know that there are a lot of people out there who want to treat prescription drug abuse as a completely separate issue from illicit drug abuse – after all, prescription drugs (within certain tightly controlled parameters only) are legal. But it’s all interrelated. The war on drugs has affected all drug abuse, because the entire pharmacology has been put out of whack. There will always be some people who will look to drugs as a way of dealing with life. What we need to be doing is coming up with better and safer options for those people (combined with education and treatment, of course) rather than trying to ratchet up enforcement in a zero-tolerance system.

The failed system we have of constantly increasing enforcement has only driven people to more dangerous activity rather than reducing harm, while also indiscriminately sweeping in all the responsible drug users who don’t need assistance. A responsible system of regulated legalization of drugs, with different regulations for different drug harms, would leave the responsible users alone, reduce the harm to all, and free up the system to focus on helping abusers before they die.

Not a single one of the debaters in the New York Times Room for Debate is willing to address a system that will really change things for the better.

Editorial in the Bangkok Post:

Quick executions no solution to drug problem

When the voice of reason is that you should take some time before executing convicted drug offenders rather then executing them immediately, then the entire conversation itself exists in some bizarro world outside civilized society.

Congratulations to Florida for resisting the lure of privatizing its prisons yesterday.

Today, the Florida Senate averted disaster by voting down a proposal to create the largest private prison system in America. The plan would have turned over nearly 30 Florida correctional facilities to private, for-profit companies, which have would run the prisons under contract with the state. […]

The defeat of the privatization bill is a victory for Florida. As Julie Ebenstein, Policy & Advocacy Counsel at the ACLU of Florida, explained shortly after the bill’s defeat: “Florida’s prison system needs reform, but private prisons aren’t reform – they deform the process by linking corporate profit to incarceration. The bottom line is that private prisons make money by keeping people in prison when we should be looking for ways to keep them out in the first place.”

The privatization of prisons is one of the more perverse developments to our criminal justice system in recent years. It makes no long term logical fiscal sense to taxpayers and it’s a disaster in terms of public policy, as it actually creates a fiscal incentive to private companies to lobby for more people to be locked up.

This disturbing article by Chris Kirkham makes it clear: Private Prison Corporation Offers Cash In Exchange For State Prisons

As state governments wrestle with massive budget shortfalls, a Wall Street giant is offering a solution: cash in exchange for state property. Prisons, to be exact.

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for “challenging corrections budgets.” In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post.

Did you catch that part? “a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full”

Now if that isn’t a perverse incentive. The state actually entering into an agreement that guarantees a certain prison population. And if prison population falls? Why, I guess they’ll just have to convict more people, sentence them for more years, or pass more criminal laws.

This puts the private prison industry and the states into a joint interest in maintaining prison populations. And that means certain things must be avoided, as Corrections Corporation has made clear…

“The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws,” the company’s most recent annual filing noted. “For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.”

Drug legalization is bad for the business of incarceration.

’bout time.

Levitt Announces US Senate Candidacy

Levitt’s campaign platform advocates policies in the public interest: investment in sustainable energy, infrastructure jobs and education, single payer health care, ending the drug war, and popular policies on energy, war, and finance that PAC-friendly party leaders don’t dare to endorse.

Drug warrior Feinstein is connected to all the big money, so this won’t be an easy one, but it sure is refreshing to see. It’s been a long time since she’s been forced to care about her constituents.

This American Life

Advance the audio to 23:35 for the segment: 21 Chump Street

Last year at three high schools in Palm Beach County, Florida, several young police officers just out of training were sent undercover to pose as students, tasked with making drug arrests. They went to classes, slept through classes, copied other students homework, texted during class, had Facebook accounts, etc. just like all the other students. Only the police knew who they were, not the teachers, or parents, or obviously, the real students.

A kid named Justin – an 18-year-old honor student – was in the last semester of his senior year. And Justin could hardly believe his luck when a very pretty new girl (everyone had noticed her) showed up in not just one, but two of his classes. …

He flirts with her in classes, tells her all his secrets, and even asks her to prom. After some time, this pretty girl asks him if he can get her some pot….

Next thing Justin knows he’s a felon.

… and shoot your dog.

Kerlikowske said one of the key parts of the Obama administration’s strategy to combat drug abuse is to “remove the stigma…and to help people understand you can recover.”

“I think it is what we might call a teachable moment when someone passes – particularly as someone as highly thought of and such an incredible performer as Whitney Houston,” Kerlikowske said. “We can use this as a moment to help people understand. There are millions of Americans that are suffering from this problem…so we can use this as a chance to move forward.”

That’s right, the government is here to remove the stigma and that’s why they’re raiding medical marijuana dispensaries and sending DEA agents to bust down doors, and funding drug wars around the world that end in thousands of deaths.

Yes, death can be a teachable moment, and a time to move forward. But Kerlikowske’s the last one to look to for lessons or direction.

Tony Bennett stands by his call to legalise all drugs

Following last night’s (February 12) Grammy win for his duet with the late Amy Winehouse, ‘Body and Soul’, crooner Tony Bennett has stood by his call to have all drugs legalised.

He made the original comments at Clive Davis’ Saturday night pre-Grammys party in the wake of Whitney Houston’s death. Speaking to Rolling Stone, the 17 time Grammy winner said he had received a “mostly positive” reaction to his comments, adding that legalisation would: “get rid of all the gangsters that make people hide.

Good for Tony.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy something from a real class act.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIrcxGdyUdk&feature=related

Don’t have time to write about it now (and I will be at some time), but…

Read this: Killing Whitney Houston by Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms

and this: Don’t let Whitney Houston become the next Len Bias – a response by Mark at Nobody’s Business (along with a comment by Jack there).

Apparently nobody considered that drug smugglers might have access to a jack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGfWgiOSMZQ&feature=player_embedded#!

Via Transform

Guatemala prez to propose legalizing drugs

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said Saturday he will propose legalizing drugs in Central America in an upcoming meeting with the region’s leaders.

Perez Molina said in a radio interview that his proposal would include decriminalizing the transportation of drugs through the area.

“I want to bring this discussion to the table,” he said. “It wouldn’t be a crime to transport, to move drugs. It would all have to be regulated.”

Central America is waking up very forcefully to the fact that they are the unwilling battleground for the war that the U.S. is fighting, and there isn’t enough money coming from the U.S. (or likely to) to make that worthwhile.

It’s like the U.S. went to the rest of America and said “Hey, we’d like to fight a war, but we don’t want to do it at our place. We just vacuumed. OK if we use your living room? We’ll give you a few bucks for the inconvenience.” And it sounded like a good deal at first until their children started dying.

Now, the countries to the south are all starting to get sick and tired of it. Ready to put up lawn signs saying “No drug war here. Try further north.”