Category Archives: War On Drugs

Its probably just a coincidence that three of our 10 favorite songs from June premiered on the same day, the very first day of the month. It kicked off a calendar page that offered album announcements from cornerstone acts like Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age, that saw Halsey and Katy Perry become the first two women to top the Billboard 200 in 2017, and that featured new album drops from Phoenix and Fleet Foxes.

Its not that those artists didnt have entries worthy of our monthly wrap-up (well, except for Perry). It just speaks to how strong of a month June was that cuts like J-Boy from Phoenix or Run from Foo Fighters had to be left off the list. Also notable was a surprising return to form from Iron & Wine with Call It Dreaming, DJDS continuing to elbow their way into mainstream consideration with Trees on Fire, most everything from the Lorde and Vince Staples albums, and a trio of Radiohead tracks that have remained dormant for two decades.

What we did settle on was a pair of Atlanta rappers striking gold in collaboration, a standout track off the debut LP from TDEs first lady, a former Vampire Weekend member shining in technicolor, and our favorite sister act doing their best to honor the memory of the Miami Sound Machine. Plus, you know, those three songs that kicked off June 2017 to be a quite memorable month for music.

Philip Cosores Executive Editor

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Top Songs of the Month: Vince Staples, The War on Drugs, and Lorde - Consequence of Sound (blog)

Editors Note: Starting June 25, the Inquirer will run on its print, online, and social media platforms a series of stories, reports and commentaries on the socioeconomic impact positive and negative that President Duterte has made in his first year in office. The articles will focus on how the former Davao City mayor has coped with the challenges of the presidency in five major areas that Filipinos consider most important in their lives: peace and order, traffic, economy, governance and foreign policy. This evaluation of the administrations achievements and shortcomings will take into account what Mr. Duterte had promised to do during last years presidential campaign, his June 30 inaugural speech and his July 25 State of the Nation Address.

In this picture taken June 29, 2017 shows smokes billows inside Malawi City as the military launched fresh airstrikes on controlled positions of Islamic State-inspired terrorists as fighting rages for 36 days now.

Distraught housewife Camalia Bauntos husband is trapped in their house in Marawi City and she is pinning her hopes of being reunited with him on President Dutertes vow to crush a small band of Islamic State (IS)-linked terrorists who have brought destruction to the once proud Muslim city in Mindanao.

The Baunto couple, along with their extended family, voted for Mr. Duterte in 2016, helping to propel the former Davao City mayor to the countrys top government post on a promise to bring peace and order to a region long ravaged by armed conflict.

But that promise has been overtaken by deadly events. Abu Sayyaf gunmen, the Maute group and their foreign allies, who have all pledged allegiance to IS, launched a daring raid on Marawi on May 23.

After more than a month of fighting, the death toll has surpassed 400303 IS gunmen, 75 soldiers and police, and 44 civilians, according to military figures.

An estimated 200 residents, including Bauntos husband Nixon, are believed to be held hostage by the gunmen or trapped in the fighting that has transformed the once-vibrant city into a desolate landscape of bombed-out buildings resembling war-torn Aleppo in Syria.

I am losing hope, Baunto told the Inquirer. I am begging the President to rescue him. Is this the peace he had promised us?

Martial law

In reaction to the siege, Mr. Duterte declared martial law in the entire Mindanao while he was on a visit to Russia with all his top defense and security officials and cut short his trip to return home.

The President said he would not allow IS to gain a foothold in the Philippines.

The siege of Marawi was triggered by an attempt by security forces to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of an Abu Sayyaf faction who had been appointed by IS emir, or leader, in Southeast Asia.

The Armys 1st Infantry Division spokesperson, Lt. Col. Jo-Ar Herrera, said at first that Hapilon was backed by 15 gunmen, but as the firefight escalated, hundreds of others emerged from their hideouts around the city, engaging the surprised troops.

Miscalculation

Analysts said that since Mr. Duterte assumed office last year, his administration appeared to have focused much of its resources into carrying out a war on drugs, which had left at least 10,000 suspected drug users, dealers and traffickers dead.

Officials have neglected the telltale signs of Islamic radicalism among a new crop of Islamists in Mindanao, analysts said.

Richard Javad Heydarian, a political analyst at De La Salle University, said the Marawi conflict puts into focus whether [Mr. Duterte] has a proper appreciation of the sheer scale of the problem in his own backyard.

Without a doubt, the siege of Marawi has been the greatest crisis for Mr. Duterte so far, despite the myriad of controversies surrounding his key policies, including the bloody war on drugs and diplomatic spats with traditional allies, Heydarian said.

We are not only talking about the prospect of a distant caliphate under the flag of Isis, but a potentially disastrous contagion of terror across his home island of Mindanao, he said, using another name for IS.

Undercut ratings

The destruction of Marawi will likely undercut his sky-high approval ratings, particularly among Moros, who initially saw him as their sole and most powerful voice in imperial Manila since the founding of [the] Philippine republic, Heydarian said.

The Marawi siege also forced the government to reassess its independent foreign policy that had seen Mr. Duterte lambast the Philippines traditional ally, the United States, in favor of Russia and China.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, martial law implementer, has since sought help from American troops and welcomed Australian military assistance.

In many ways, it has been a sobering and heart-wrenching month for a President who sincerely cared for the people of Mindanao, yet didnt manage to fully optimize existing intelligence and security networks to anticipate, prevent and effectively contain the terrorism conundrum in his home island, Heydarian said.

Complacency

Mr. Dutertes fixation on the war on drugs had overshadowed the equally important war on terrorism, according to Rommel Banlaoi, head of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, which has been advising the defense establishment on threat groups.

The fighting in Marawi was an outcome of continued downplaying of threats from pro-IS groups, Banlaoi said.

This government attitude of downplaying the threat resulted in unintended complacency in gathering actionable intelligence information necessary for the development of an effective preemptive counter-terrorism plan, he said.

The battle in Marawi City could have been prevented had government forces seriously exercised due diligence in gathering reliable and accurate intelligence information while enemy forces were still in [the] inception stage, Banlaoi said.

Military officials have strongly denied that there had been a failure of intelligence on IS plans in Marawi.

Long fight

On Tuesday, the President said he wanted to finish the fighting soon and saw no satisfaction even in winning it.

I already had the complete picture and I knew that it would be a long fight, he said at the Eid al-Fitr celebration in Malacaang.

In his report to Congress on the martial law declaration, Mr. Duterte said the Maute group, which had 253 men by late 2016, was bent on turning all of Mindanao into an IS province. As much as 75 percent of Marawi had been infiltrated by the Maute group and the Abu Sayyaf, his report said.

Solicitor General Jose Calida said martial law was justified because of the festering rebellion of the Maute group, which had allied with Hapilons Abu Sayyaf faction and pledged allegiance to IS.

Calida said the more dangerous Maute group had transmogrified into an invasion force of foreign terrorists to launch attacks in the Philippines if its members could not travel to Syria to fight alongside IS.

Despite shelling and bombing runs, the terrorists remain well-entrenched in a small area in the city, posting snipers at strategic points in Marawi to prevent the advance of troops more accustomed to jungle warfare than urban fighting.

The Marawi siege has alarmed the countrys Southeast Asian neighbors.

They fear that IS is trying to set up a stronghold in Mindanao, which it could use as a springboard to launch attacks across the region.

Maute brothers

Mr. Duterte had earlier dismissed the Maute brothers as drug-addled former cops.

In truth, Omarkhayam Maute studied in Egypt where he embraced Islamic militancy, according to various intelligence groups.

He taught at a madrasah in Indonesia, where his wife is from, but eventually went back home to pursue his dream of establishing a state purely for Muslims in Mindanao.

His older brother, Abdullah, was more radical and inherited their father Cayamoras ideals as a former official of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Cayamora and wife Farhanadescribed by police as the groups financierhave been arrested separately.

The brothers had set up Daulah Islamiyah, which the police had played down as a group of small-time crooks operating near Lanaos forests.

The group grabbed national headlines in September last year when they claimed responsibility for bombing the Presidents hometown of Davao, killing 15 people.

Explore on our special anniversary site the Inquirer series of multiplatform reports and commentaries on the gains and challenges during President Duterte's first year in office. Daily content begins June 25 till July 24.

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War on terror took backseat as Duterte focused on drug war ... - Inquirer.net

Were sitting in a cramped and claustrophobic house in the middle of a rabbit warren of small alleyways in the fishing town of Navotas, Metro Manila. Its 40 degrees outside.

The tiny room where we sit is seething with something that feels like panic, or shock. Or grief that is waiting for its chance to be felt.

I am trying to find the words to ask the mother of two dead sons how she chose which of them to bury.

Photo: Maria Misa De Pirini in her home in Navotas on 12 September

Maria Misa De Pirini's sons Danilo and Aljon were both casualties in the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's deadly war on drugs. At the time of their killings, Duterte had been in office for three months and his drug war had already led to the deaths of an estimated 4,000 drug users by police and vigilante killers. Today, a year after the presidents inauguration, that figure is now over 9,000.

Maria was one of many working-class people who voted for Duterte, believing his promises to end both corruption and the scourge of drug abuse. A perceived representative of the working class, he won in a landslide victory. But his promises led to unfettered, state sanctioned killing of many of the Philippines most vulnerable people: the poor, who often use drugs to escape their everyday realities.

Photo: Quezon City Jail was built to house 400 inmates but, as of September 11 2016, currently houses 3669 inmates. The prison has seen a drastic increase in intake since the war on drugs was announced, with 62%of inmates incarcerated for drug cases. The jail has a planned 'decongestion' strategy, but prison officials admit progress is slow. 16 September.

On the first day of Duterte's term in office, his war on drugs claimed four lives, on the second, 14 and on the ninth, 30. That number soon rose. Often the victims heads would be wrapped in packing tape, with crude messages scrawled on cardboard next to the bodies, labelling them drug pushers or users. Bodies piled up.

The day after Aljon was murdered, I joined a group of local journalists covering the Night Beat essentially the reporting of the latest drug war killings and their aftermath. That night, we got a call saying there had been a drug-related killing in a nearby city in Metro Manila called Caloocan. We drove to the scene in convoy.

Photo: Police officers conduct Oplan Tokhang, "Knock and Plead" operations, in Payatas, Quezon City, on 16 September.

Guided by the blue and red lights of the police and SOCO vans, journalists readied their gear, switched on LED lights, and moved quickly down the dark, tungsten-lit alleyways towards the scene. The body of a man, lying face down, confronted us as we arrived. He was shirtless, wearing dark blue shorts and sandals. His torso was covered in blood that body collectors tried to wipe off before they loaded him on to the stretcher to carry him away.

From what we could gather, the man was shot and killed by police during whats known as a buy-bust operation an undercover sting operation where a police officer impersonates a drug dealer. When the would-be drug buyers attempt to resist arrest, they are shot and killed by the undercover officer on site.

Photo: The wife of an unidentified man killed by police sweeps away his blood after his body is removed from the scene on 22 September.

For a moment there was a stillness to the scene. Camera shutters clicked, SOCO outlined the positions of bullet cartridges on the ground in chalk, their torches occasionally illuminating the dead mans face. Jarringly, a rooster crowed. Two women sat metres away and cried. We later found out that one of them was the deceased mans wife. She threw buckets of water on the concrete outside her home to wash away the blood; crimson rivulets streamed down the alleyway. No witness statements were taken, and all of us knew that no one would be held to account for this mans murder.

We didnt stay for long a colleague got a call saying there had been another drug killing 10 minutes away.

Instead of resolution, or some promise of justice, the media covering this drug war can only capture thousands of different portraits of grief.

The woman who cries while she washes her husband's blood away.

The mother who must chose which of her sons to bury.

Photo: Relatives gather before Adonis Dela Rosa's entombment.

When I first spoke to Maria Misa De Pirini after the murders of both of her sons, she appeared visibly shocked that they had become fatalities in a drug war that she had initially supported. She spoke in monotone, so disbelieving in her grief that her own tears seemed to surprise her. Like they belonged to someone else.

Aljon had been the first to die.

He had told his mother he used drugs to make his body stronger for work at the fish factory where he and his brother found employment. It's more likely that being high made his job bearable.

On 21 September 2016, masked men came to Maria's house demanding to take Aljon and his friend, a known drug pusher, away. Maria pleaded with them, asking for mercy. She knew that if they took him, she night never see him again. Her pleas fell on deaf ears.

Photo: An unidentified man is killed in a suspected buy-bust operation in Caloocan. 22 September.

Police later told Maria that two bodies had been found under a bridge close to her home. When she arrived she saw one of them was Aljon. His body was beaten, with two gunshot wounds to the chest, one to the head.

After Aljon died, Maria feared that Danilo might be next. She told him to keep a low profile in the area. Those warnings were in vain. A week later, masked men suspected to be police apprehended him and the men he was seeking refuge with. He was severely beaten, shot and dumped under the same bridge where Aljon's body was found.

No one was arrested for either murder, and any hope of justice for her sons was a luxury that Maria simply could not afford. Maria's poverty had also forced her into making a terrible choice, heartbreaking in its banality. Which sons body to bury, and which to leave unclaimed?

When I tried to ask Maria how she had made that choice, my fixer and I were sitting on the floor of her two-square-metre living room-cum-kitchen. The floor above us had been used as a space to sleep for Maria, her daughter, and until very recently Danilo and Aljon.

Danilo's name tag for the recycling depot he sometimes worked at still hung up on the wall of her living room, next to a teddy bear and a Catholic statue.

My question got lost in translation, misinterpreted as me asking Maria which of her sons she loved the most. Her response was confused, and I couldnt understand it.

Photo: Cemetery workers hoist Dela Rosas coffin into his tomb.

Days later, I went with Maria to the Navotas funeral parlour where Danilo's body was being kept. The parlour's director, Orly Fernandez, admitted that they had run out of space to store the bodies that had flooded in as the war on drugs intensified. He showed me how bodies were piled on top of each other, sometimes three deep, on the floor.

He then pointed to Danilo's body, lying on the floor wrapped in a blue and yellow Hello Kitty blanket.

Maria had asked Fernandez for a discount on Danilo's burial, and he agreed, but it was still too expensive for her to afford. She was forced to accept that the only way to bury her son was to leave his body unclaimed, and hope that would get included in the next mass burial of unclaimed bodies the funeral parlour conducted. Four months later, in January 2017, Danilos body was buried in the grave of a woman also killed in a police drug operation. The grave bears only the womans name, as Maria couldnt afford a tombstone for Danilo.

Her choice, I now know, was driven by the fact that Aljon's funeral parlour did not offer the option of a pauper's burial. It wasn't an epic dilemma driven by love or connection, but a painfully simple choice, driven by Maria's economic reality.

If I am honest, I wanted there to be a powerful emotional force behind Maria's choice. One that would subsume her sons battered bodies, the bullet holes to their heads. The Hello Kitty blanket wrapped around Danilo's broken bones. The unmarked grave he shares with another dead drug user.

Without that choice being something beyond these simple horrors, this story effectively just captures murder that is normalised, genocide that is considered unremarkable and carnage that is, somehow, acceptable.

We sweep the blood away and move on. Like there is no heartbreak here. DM

Fixing and additional reporting by Guill Ramos

Shaun Swingler spent a month in the Philippines reporting on the drug war for various news outlets. In collaboration with Chronicle, he produced a short documentary film on the drug war which premiered at Encounters Documentary Film Festival where it won the EYE Youth Jury Award. A trailer for the film can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPjRVknCW_Y

Photo: Undertakers transport the body of an alleged drug suspect who was killed by police in Sitio San Roque, Quezon City, on 14 September.

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Reporter's Notebook: A year into Duterte's bloody war on drugs, little has changed - Daily Maverick

Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock

*Editor's note: In this monthly blog series, the Drug Policy Alliance will examine the nexus between the War on Drugs and law enforcement practices that result in the mass criminalization, incarceration and dehumanization of communities of color. These pieces will reflect on the ways in which the institutions of policing and prosecution- both driven by calls for law and order in the wake of the War on Drugs- continue to function as instruments of reinforcement for the overarching structural racism on which the drug war was founded.

Over the past several weeks, the details surrounding the tragic killing of Jordan Edwards have been revealed under the intensely watchful eye of a public that continues to face a seemingly never-ending flood of stories recounting instances of police brutality and thepervasive lack of justicefor black victims on the receiving end of police misconduct.

Outside of a media sphere permeated by meticulously crafted, state-serving narratives marked by the use of coded language as a form of fear mongering that encourages brutalization in carrying out the war on drugs and cultivates public apathy towards the victims of such violence, a situation in which a police officer responding to a neighbors call aboutpossible underage drinkingthat ends with the use of lethal force on a car full of frightened kids could not be dressed as anything other than a senseless act of violence. This murder reinforces the message that the protections associated with the assumption of innocence and positive police discretion towards instances of youthful indiscretionare not privileges extended to black youth.

Further, a failure to also identify this situation as one where the duty to protect and serve was superseded by aninstitutional obsessionwith policing and restricting the autonomy of black people would require willful ignorance of thehistory of enslavement and subjugationof black people in this country.

Jordans story is not anomalous. The explosion in exposure of police brutality across the nation and subsequent reflection on my own experiences with law enforcement while growing up in Dallas quickly led me to the sobering realization that any of the nights I enjoyed not long ago, when I was Jordans age, could have ended in tragedy. The price of this realization has been an existence marred by constant feelings of fear and anxiety about whatcouldhappen and how my personalrelationship with drugs might be used in an attempt to strip me of my humanity posthumously.

As a result, I often find myself preemptively policing my actions, my speech, expressions of my emotions, my movements, and even my writing, but none of these things have proven adequate in protecting me from potentially volatile interactions with law enforcement or figures that have been endowed with authority to use force by whatever institution employs them.

Knowing that I am not alone is deeply saddening.

What is much more devastating, however, is reading in theDallas Morning Newsthat kids who occupy some of the same spaces I once did experienced such a degree of psychological trauma from Jordans death and similar situations that they feel they have no choice but to forfeit simple joys of youth like playing basketball and partying with friends.

Living with the psychological burden imposed by the constant threat of state violence is not freedom. We cannot begin to chip away at thehyper-criminalization of black and Latino youthuntil we end the war on drugs. If not, the reality most of America is privileged enough to enjoy - the assumption that an interaction with law enforcement will not end in their demise - will remain an aspiration at best.

When I was in elementary school, a large part of the schools efforts to convince us to just say no to drugs involved encouraging us to dare to be different. As an adult, I am imploring the powers that be and those who have been complicit in cultivating this drug war climate to put the same amount of time and resources into daring police to allow all youth the space to enjoy their lives without fear of those entrusted with the responsibility of protecting them.

This piece first appeared on the Drug Policy Alliance Blog

Zacchaeus Stantonis policy associate with the Drug Policy Alliance.

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The War on Drugs Places 'Black Joy' in the Line of Fire - AlterNet

'The Force' by Don Winslow(Photo: William Morrow)

Heres a look at whats new on USA TODAYs Best-Selling Books list

'The Force' is with him: Riding strong reviews and movie buzz, Don Winslow has his highest debut ever as his new cop novel, The Force (William Morrow), lands at No. 17. (The full list will be published on Thursday.)

Oh yeah, there was also that full-page ad (and tweet) in Sundays New York Times, in which Winslow blasted President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions for wanting to drag us back into one of the most catastrophic social policies in this nations history: #TheWaronDrugs.

As Winslow points out in his lengthy open letter, he spent two decades researching and writing about the failed War on Drugs in his novels The Power of the Dog and The Cartel. (Winslow had his previous best showing on the list withThe Cartel, which peakedat No. 54 in 2015.)

Sessionshas directed federal prosecutors to charge defendants with the most serious "provable"crimes that carry the stiffest penalties, a reversal of President Obama's more lenient policy toward drug offenders.

So far, Trump has not tweeted a response or taken out his own full-page ad.

Winslow tells USA TODAY that he placed the ad at his own expense because "I feel so strongly that this (drug) policy is wrong. (It) seeks to expand a disastrous policy that has ripped our nation apart."

As for a response from the White House, he says: "After writing about the drug wars for two decades I have developed a number of high-ranking officials as sources. I have heard from so many people cops, congressmen, senators, governors that agree with my position but fear saying so publicly. I have not heard a formal response from the White House but I do know for a fact that Attorney General Sessions and Trump were shown the ad."

The Force is about a good NYPD cop who becomes corrupt. In a **** (out of four stars) reviewfor USA TODAY, Don Oldenburg called the novel intoxicating" and "riveting.

Ridley Scott has bought the film rights to The Force (with James Mangold set to direct) and Scott is directing an adaptation of The Cartel, based on the escapades of (now incarcerated) Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

In the ad, Winslow also criticized the Trump administrations gun-control policy and plugged his new book: My most recent novel, The Force, deals with the NYPD's struggle against drugs and guns. My research shows that most of the weapons used in gang violence originate in states that have weak gun laws and unrestricted gun shows.

Winslow is in the midst of a national book tour.

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Don Winslow has a best seller, slams Trump's 'War on Drugs' - USA TODAY

Last week, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post that drug trafficking is an inherently dangerous business. If you want to collect a drug debt, you cant, and dont, file a lawsuit in court. You collect it by the barrel of a gun.

He has used this thinking to resurrect the long-failed War on Drugs that goes against the growing bipartisan support for criminal justice reform. He has announced his intention to imprison more non-violent drug offenders, expand the police state, and crack down on medical marijuana users.

These things would happen in a country that already runs the largest prison system in the developed world, according to Prison Policy Initiative, and commits its penal labor, unprotected by the 13th amendment, to a life of modern slavery.

Where Sessions logic fails is his misunderstanding of the nature of black markets.

Drug trafficking is violent for the same reason liquor trafficking was violent in the Prohibition era. When markets arent protected by the states monopoly on violence, parties can afford to renege on their contracts and promises.

Illegality motivates traffickers to take enforcement into their own hands. Decriminalizing and taxing dispensaries, like what Massachusetts, Washington and Colorado have done with marijuana, undercuts the illicit market, weakening the power of criminals and reducing violence.

A revived tough on crime stance that attacks suppliers would do little to stop illicit drug consumption. Any economics teacher can tell you reducing supply in a market with inelastic demandlike the market for addictive substanceswouldnt reduce the quantity bought and consumed.

Rather, its more likely that a crackdown on suppliers would simply raise prices. Similarly, researchers continue to find that tougher penalties and longer jail time does little difference in deterring crime than lighter sentences, according to the Sentencing Project.

It would be wiser of Sessions to realize that the worst drug epidemic of our time is not marijuana, methamphetamines, or even heroin, but prescription opioids.

Over two million Americans suffer from debilitating addictions to pain relievers, which is more than meth and heroin addicts combined, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

And the rate in Indiana is higher than the national average.

Perverse fiscal incentives for doctors and aggressive ad campaigns by big pharma companies have pushed opioids like Vicodin, OxyContin, and fentanyl onto millions of desperate people.

Sessions and our own state prosecutors could better spend their time taking on big pharma and the pain industry for things like false advertising, as the state legislature in Kentucky is doing, according to the Kentucky Law Journal.

A better drug policy would focus on the demand of drug consumption by supporting educational programs, supervised injections and rehabilitation.

Progressive public programs in Portugal, Canada, and the United Kingdom offer medical-grade heroin to addictswhich undercuts the black marketsupervise injection sites, and mandate the inclusion of substance abuse treatment in public insurance programs, none of which is addressed in the Republican health care proposals, according to Mother Jones.

We could go a long way to a healthier, more secure public by transitioning opioid-based painkillers to cannabinoids and rewriting the fiscal incentives that lead doctors to over-prescribe, according to the Washington Post.

To be clear, I support a drug policy that reduces dependency, violent crime and minimizes risks to public health.

Sessions, however, has failed to offer policies that achieve these goals. Rather, it seems that people like him sacrifice the well-being of vulnerable Americans on the altar of wishful thinking.

Its time for change.

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COLUMN: Jeff Sessions' war on drugs would continue a failed approach - Indiana Daily Student

Judge Bobbi Rank has sat behind the bench in Gregory, Tripp, Todd and Bennett counties since her appointment in October. She joins the Sixth Judicial Circuit at an interesting time, as charges of possession and ingestion of Schedule I and II drugs, which include methamphetamine, plummet in one of her counties and skyrocket in another.

In Gregory County, 22 charges of possession or ingestion of Schedule I and II drugs were filed in 2015, according to the Unified Judicial System. The next year, only 20 charges were filed.

But so far this year, there have only been four charges filed, according to UJS.

At that rate, Gregory County would see an estimated 8.44 drug charges, a nearly 62 percent reduction in only two years.

"Anytime we've got less drug crimes, that's beneficial to society," Rank said.

Scott Anshutz, Mayor of Gregory, the largest town in Gregory County with about 1,300 people, credited the decline to county and city law enforcement, even though every officer in Gregory's three-person department was hired in 2016.

"The newer generation versus us older guys probably know what to look for," Anshutz said.

The three officers are 31 years old or younger, according to Gregory Chief of Police Travis DeBuhr, and two had no prior law enforcement experience. But DeBuhr said his officers have been quick to learn, and they know what to look for.

"I think just working with the other departments and putting the hard work into it is the only way you can really get it done, especially with the new guys, trying to get them caught up on it," DeBuhr said.

The reduction in drug crimes is even more impressive compared to the state average. In South Dakota, possession and ingestion charges rose more than 25 percent from 2015 to 2016, from 7,898 to 9,906. With 4,751 charges filed so far this year, the state is on pace to break 10,000 total charges.

But despite the reduction in one county, Rank said drug crimes still make up the bulk of her caseload. In Tripp County, Schedule I and II drug charges rose 178 percent in 2016, topping out at 64 charges. It's on pace to drop back down, but this year may still outpace the 2015 total.

The greatest rise in Rank's counties comes in Bennett. There were 12 charges filed in that county in 2015, but they more than doubled the next year and have continued to grow exponentially. So far in 2017, there have already been 34 charges filed, putting the county on pace to file more than 70 possession and ingestion charges, which would be a nearly 498 percent increase in two years.

Rank doesn't know why drug crime is increasing there, but she said judges across the state are staying busy with drug charges, and she was prepared to handle any situation after applying to take now-retired Judge Kathleen Trandahl's place.

"I think when you apply to be a judge, you just, you know as part of your application that you can take any sort of case," Rank said.

But even with drug crimes and a murder case in the area, Rank, who grew up near Winner, is happy to bring her family back to Tripp County.

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Gregory County finding success in war on drugs - Daily Republic

Don Winslows new epic novel The Force centers on NYPD detective sergeant Denny Malone, who leads an elite unit, waging a war on drugs, gangs and guns. Malone is both effective and corrupt, the kind of figure that raises moral questions of when the ends justify the means.

Fox already has snatched up the rights to the novel, published last week, with James Mangold directing and David Mamet adapting the book into a screenplay.

In an interview with Varietys PopPolitics on SiriusXM, Winslow talks about how his own experience, working as a private detective in New York in the 70s, inspired this latest work, as well as how hes long had the idea of centering one of his novels in the city.

The French Connection I can remember to this moment sitting in a big theater on Broadway in Times Square watching that film, and thinking, Man, this is so exciting, and gritty and vivid. Wouldnt it be great if some day I could make my living telling stories like this?' Winslow says.

The Force is set in the present day, against a backdrop of politically charged issues over police use of force and the war on drugs.

Winslow is particularly outspoken about the Trump administrations approach to the drug war, having taken out a full-page ad in the New York Times on Monday in which he says that the president wants to drag us back into one of the most catastrophic social policies in this nations history.

What Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions have vocalized lately is a return to the worst days of the war on drugs, in terms of maximum sentences, arresting again for marijuana, and pushing for heavy sentences there, Winslow says. You would think that 50 years of futility, 50 years of policies that have only made things worse, you try something different.

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Winslow talks about his process of researching The Force, including interviews and conversations with cops, combing through court records and studying policing textbooks. After his success in writing on the Mexican drug war in novels such as The Cartel, Winslow as said that cops are harder to penetrate that drug cartels.

They are more insular. Its a more protective kind of society, he says. I cant tell you how many cops told me, I only talk to other cops. Only other cops can understand me. And both professionally and personally, they have a longstanding habit of keeping things close, keeping things tight. Drug traffickers, particularly the ones you interview in prison, dont have a lot to lose, and are more amenable to talking and telling stories.

But Winslow says that once he established trust with NYPD officers, then you could believe everything that they said. You could go deep with them in ways you never could with drug traffickers.

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Coal Culture

Michael Bonfiglio, director of the documentary From the Ashes, talks about the making of his project, which features interviews with displaced coal miners and others who are grappling with the health and environmental impacts of the 19th century energy source.

While President Trump decided to pull out of the Paris climate accords because of his belief that it would harm coal industry jobs, From the Ashes shows how the industry is still unlikely to see a rebound in jobs, given the mechanization of the business.

The coal industry is not a huge employer, and replacing the jobs that the coal industry provides is not an undaunting task at all, Bonfiglio says.

From the Ashes debuted on National Geographic on Sunday, but is available for free on streaming sites like YouTube, Hulu and Amazon until next Monday.

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PopPolitics, hosted by Varietys Ted Johnson, airs from 2-3 p.m. ET/11-noon PT on SiriusXMs political channel POTUS. It also is available on demand.

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PopPolitics: 'The Force' Author Don Winslow on the 'Insanity' of Trump's Return to a War on Drugs (Listen) - Variety

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates has publicly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions for reinstating harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences aimed at curbing violent crime throughout the U.S.

In a Washington Post op-ed titled "Making America Scared Again Won't Make Us Safer" published Friday, Yates argued that incarcerating low-level drug couriers is counterproductive, expensive and damaging to American communities.

"Not only are violent crime rates still at historic lows nearly half of what they were when I became a federal prosecutor in 1989 but there is also no evidence that the increase in violent crime some cities have experienced is the result of drug offenders not serving enough time in prison," Yates wrote.

"Every dollar spent imprisoning a low-level nonviolent drug offender for longer than necessary is a dollar we dont have to investigate and prosecute serious threats, from child predators to terrorists," Yates continued. "Its a dollar we dont have to support state and local law enforcement for cops on the street, who are the first lines of defense against violent crime. And its a dollar we dont have for crime prevention or recidivism reduction within our prison system, essential components of building safe communities."

Last month, Sessions in a memorandum ordered federal prosecutors nationwide to pursue the "most serious, readily provable offense" in drug cases.

"It is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense," he wrote at the time.

Many were quick to label the directive as the new War on Drugs. Yates in her op-ed encouraged lawmakers to consider the "human costs" of the initiative.

"More than 2 million children are growing up with a parent behind bars, including 1 in 9 African American children," she wrote. "Huge numbers of Americans are being housed in prisons far from their home communities, creating precisely the sort of community instability where violent crime takes root."

Yates said that throughout her career as a prosecutor at the Justice Department, she charged high-level, international narcotics traffickers and had "no hesitation" asking judges to impose long prison sentences.

"While there is always room to debate the most effective approach to criminal justice, that debate should be based on facts, not fear. Its time to move past the campaign-style rhetoric of being 'tough' or 'soft' on crime," she concluded.

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Sally Yates Condemns Jeff Sessions for Reinstating Harsh Low-Level Drug Sentences - TIME

COLORADO SPRINGS The Trump administrations tough talk on marijuana is creating an unusual alliance: pot smokers and the conservative Koch political network.

Mark Holden, one of the influential networks top leaders, decried President Donald Trumps administration for returning to the harsh sentencing era of the war on drugs.

You are never going to win the war on drugs. Drugs won, he told reporters as the network opened a three-day retreat Saturday at The Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions directive to re-evaluate marijuana policies is a particular problem. Even though it remains a federal crime to possess and use marijuana, he said, its legal in a number of states, so we have to come to grips with that somehow.

Earlier this month, Sessions asked Congress to repeal federal protections for medical marijuana, citing a historic drug epidemic related to opiates. The 2014 policy prohibits the Justice Department from using federal dollars to block states from legalizing the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.

When it comes to medical marijuana, Holden argued it should be off-limits to a federal law enforcement crackdown.

Holden, the general counsel for Koch Industries who leads a network-backed effort to address overcriminalization and criminal justice reform, was cautious about reading too much into his stance.

Im not here to say our position is legalize drugs or anything else, he said, adding: But I dont think that we should criminalize those types of things and we should let the states decide.

The approach fits with the conservative philosophies advanced by Charles and David Koch as part of their policy and political work. Holden suggested Sessions position represents a failed big government top-down approach.

Its based on fear and emotion in my opinion, he added.

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Koch network to Trump administration: You are never going to win the war on drugs. Drugs won. - The Denver Post