Drug WarRant

Of course, the concept of Jury Nullification (choosing to find a defendant not-guilty because of your disagreement with the law) is a time-honored Constitutional power of the jury. After all, the jury of peers is the highest judge of the law in our system, and cannot be held to account as to their reason for making a finding.

However, the judiciary has been openly antagonistic toward the concept, even to the point of excluding jurors who believed in the concept, instructing juries that they’re not allowed to think that way, and even attempting to jail activities who are merely trying to inform the population of their rights as jurors.

So this is significant:

Justice Sotomayor Says ‘There Is a Place, I Think, for Jury Nullification’

This week Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had some kind words for jury nullification, which empowers jurors to judge the law as well as the facts of a case and may involve disregarding the law when the law is unjust. During a discussion about juries at NYU Law School on Monday, Sotomayor, who used to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, was asked about a 1997 decision in which that court “categorically reject[ed]” nullification. “As we govern in the system, and watching it, I’m not so sure that’s right,” she said, according to Law360. “There is a place, I think, for jury nullification—finding the balance in that and the role judges should play.”

A small, but important step.

And, of course, jury nullification has been used to free some people brought to trial on drug charges. It has the potential, as more of the public becomes disenchanted with the drug war, to become even more heavily utilized, even to the point of making it difficult for prosecutors to bring certain kinds of charges forward.

For years, those of us in drug policy reform have pointed out that, while the government talks about prevention and treatment, the federal government budget has always been weighted toward enforcement and interdiction. It’s been really telling that, while they know that supply side spending is ineffective, they’ve still been doing the most there, in part because so many entrenched interests are involved.

Finally, for the first time, the proposed budget is different.

FACT SHEET: Administration’s Drug Control Budget Represents Balanced Approach to Public Health and Public Safety

The President’s Budget, submitted to the U.S. Congress today, represents the first time in the history of the Office of National Drug Control Policy that federal funding to reduce the demand for drugs is funded at similar levels as funds to reduce the supply of drugs.

So let me take a moment to congratulate the administration on finally spending less on attacking supply than on demand reduction and treatment. Good for you.

Now that I’ve done that…

They’re still proposing over 15 billion dollars on supply reduction efforts, which is an obscene amount of money to be pouring down that toilet. And out of the 15+ billion being spent on treatment and demand reduction, most of that is wasted as well, given the fact that the federal government is horribly behind in accepting scientific fact, and has its priorities based on political interests rather than good policy.

Via Making Noise in the South, A Super Serving of Shame and Stigma for Super Bowl 50

The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (NCADA) is hitting us again at the Super Bowl. This time with “All American Girl” – an ad that’s supposed to show that you should care about heroin abuse because it affects pretty white girls, too.

But, of course, the ad then doesn’t show what you do when someone is having a problem with heroin – it lets them just wander off in the distance. No, this is just another one of those frying-pan scared-straight attempts at prevention that have been shown historically to not work.

And a shit-ton of money is being poured down the drain for this nicely scored, beautifully shot Super Bowl ad, when they should be helping Dan Morrhaim get some real reform passed in Maryland that will actually make a difference.

Here’s the ad:

There is so much good information available to us about drugs and drug policy if we’re willing to actually, you know, listen to it. But science and reality have been pretty much excluded from the public policy conversations when it comes to drugs, except for that “science” that supports the drug war regime.

The absurdity of this was brought home again to me with this article…

A Maryland Lawmaker Offers A Radical New Solution To The Heroin Crisis

That certainly sounded interesting. A radical new solution? Tell me more.

On Friday, he’ll announce the introduction of a sweeping set of bills that would upend the approach to the opioid epidemic, Morhaim, a Democrat, told HuffPost.

The approach is a radical one likely to scare off nearly all politicians and probably a majority of voters. So let’s back into his bills slowly.

Wow. So radical and new that even the article has to broach the idea cautiously. I can’t wait to find out… seven paragraphs later…

OK, ready to hear the idea?

The first option is to treat the addiction so that the person is no longer using heroin. For that, a variety of treatments need to be offered, depending on the user and the circumstances. The second option is to treat the social problem by giving the most difficult-to-treat addicts free heroin — or something very close to it — in a safe, controlled environment.

Really?

OK, don’t get me wrong. This is very good. And I applaud the lawmaker for bringing this forward.

But new? Radical? Not to anyone who has been paying attention. We’ve been talking about these ideas at Drug WarRant for many years. These are ideas that have been tried, tested, and proved – the science is there. They’ve just been excluded from political consideration.

It’s sad that in today’s world… in a major world power with amazing intellectual resources, we’re stuck in the drug policy equivalent of medieval barber surgeons, and that anyone who actually proposes scientifically proven reform is considered some kind of scary radical.

Annual Arrests for Marijuana in NYC Drop From Nearly 51,000 in 2011 to Under 17,000 in 2015

According to data just released by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, New York City marijuana arrests in 2015 dropped to under 17,000 for the first time since 1996. The 16,590 arrests for low-level marijuana possession in 2015 is a 42% decline from the 26,386 in 2014 and a 67% drop from the nearly 51,000 arrests in 2011.

This is welcome news and a clear sign of some changes in leadership. New York City is one of those places where showing marijuana in public was an arrestable offense, and so cops would stop-and-frisk and tell people to empty their pockets. Once it was out of their pockets, they’d get arrested for having it out in public.

A 67% drop in four years is pretty incredible. Part of it comes from the announcement in 2014 by Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bill Bratton to stop arresting for simple possession of less than 25 grams.

Of course, 16,590 arrests is still way too high.

The Iowa caucuses are underway. Use this thread to discuss the election. Opinions are fine, disagreements are fine, but please no name-calling or insulting others (including candidates you oppose). We’ve got friends on all ends of the political spectrum on the couch.

For many years, I’ve felt that the Presidential election had little impact on drug policy — that we had to focus on building the grass roots, and bringing the population up to speed so that the politicians would be forced to follow.

So my question to you is… has that dynamic changed? With multiple states legalizing marijuana, and with a broader sense nationally that the criminal justice reform is necessary (including the Black Lives Matter movement), is this one of those moments where the right President could actually make a significant difference toward shortening the drug war?

Or, will it simply not matter? Will the political realities of compromise and bureaucracy thwart most of the efforts of a reform-minded President and, alternately, negate the backsliding attempts of a prohibition-minded President?

Readers may wish to participate in the Global Drug Survey, if you haven’t before. The goal this year is to have over 120,000 participants, in order to have really good information about drug use worldwide.

What makes this survey of particular interest is that this is an independent organization that doesn’t have prohibition as its mission.

To quote them:

Global Drug Survey seeks to become the largest most credible source of current drug use data trends in the world.

Accepting that the hidden masses of those who use substances are not the focus of government research or public health interventions, we seek to inform the wider drug using populations about their use of substances in a way that is meaningful, relevant and useful.

We strongly support harm reduction and accept that pleasure drives the majority of drug use, which for most people most of the time is not a source of distress or harm in their lives.

We acknowledge that drugs can be harmful but that the risk of harm can be significantly mitigated by the adoption of common sense risk reduction strategies.

We seek to limit the harm drugs may cause individuals and their communities by being honest, open and transparent about drug use and sharing our findings with the public without government or funder interference.

That’s something I can get behind.

I’ve taken the survey, and it seems incredibly comprehensive.

You can see findings from previous surveys here.

Radley Balko:

“In the month that police and federal officials wisely used cunning, patience to apprehend the Oregon militia leaders, there were at least 3,000 violent raids on the homes of suspected drug offenders.”

I came to New York for the weekend, to see a few shows, and attend BroadwayCon, which, fortunately, is in the hotel where I’m staying, because I’m not going outside right now. Shows are closed, vehicles have been banned, transportation shut down.

We’ll see how fast this clears up and when I get home.

In the meantime, I understand pizza has been ordered and should be arriving soon for the couchmates. Enjoy.

If the blizzard here doesn’t subside by tomorrow, send coffee.

NIDA has had a terrible track record when it comes to scientific inquiry, tending to cherry-pick the research it highlights to match its political anti-drug focus.

This is still true, and their social media pages are chock-full of fear-mongering nonsense. But once in a while, a tiny bit of truth trickles through.

Here’s one example: Childhood Maltreatment Changes Cortical Network Architecture and May Raise Risk for Substance Use — the article is from November, but was just recently highlighted on their Facebook page.

Childhood maltreatment alters children’s brain development in ways that may increase their risk for substance use and other mental disorders in adulthood. In a NIDA-supported study, researchers found that young adults who had been maltreated as children differed from others who had not been maltreated in the connectivity of nine cortical regions. The differences could compromise the maltreated group’s basic social perceptual skills, ability to maintain a healthy balance between introversion and extroversion, and ability to self-regulate their emotions and behavior.

Those of us who care about the science of drug policy already knew this, from the outstanding work of Dr. Gabor Maté (his work was also highlighted in Johann Hari’s “Chasing the Scream”).

And, of course, this flies in the face of NIDA’s usual talking points – that it’s drugs that cause addiction. The notion that there are some people who are more likely to abuse drugs because of outside influences suggests that there are other people (like the majority) who are not likely to abuse drugs, and this, leads to the notion (gasp!) that maybe drug problems should be attacked some other way than by attacking drugs.

So for them to highlight this research is really startling (although you couldn’t tell it from reading their article as they show no indication of awareness that it undermines much of their efforts).

NIDA still is up to its old tricks in one way, however. Note their usual mangling of the English language by including the word “use” in the title and in the body of the article, when, from the context, it clearly should be “abuse.”