Category Archives: War On Drugs

Anyone who has heard Ethan Nadelmann speak will remember how passionate he is about the topic of drug reform. His speech at the 2015 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Arlington, Virginia literally quieted the audience of 2,000 as he recounted some of the terrible drug enforcement policies in the U.S. and other parts of the world, some that still maintain a death penalty for simple possession.

Nadelmann is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), a drug reform advocacy organization that also played a significant role in creating the initiative that resulted in the legalization of cannabis in Washington, D.C.

Nadelmann, now 60 years old and looking for more challenges, recently announced that he is stepping down from the DPA in late April. I feel that I have accomplished a lot over my years in a lot of ballot initiatives going back to 1996, he said. What I feel that I am really trying to do now is ensure that the DPA continues to flourish and grow and be effective under the new leadership. But at the same time, I am looking forward to new adventures, and remain in marijuana reform and other drug reform issues, he said. Its an unusual time for me, but one that feels quite right.

The DPA aims to end the war on drugs. But legalization of marijuana has become more challenging as the new administration continues to send mixed signals about what they willor will notdo on a federal level for legalization.

What I think they will do is pull out the Cole memo from 2013 and start interpreting that more strictly, Nadelmann said. They are going to target asset forfeiture actions or do prosecutions of key players in the industry, and look for ways to generally make life difficult for the future of marijuana legalization.

He thinks that its time for the serious players in the industry to become more sophisticated in their advocacy at the federal level, and more effectively align with advocacy organizations like the DPA.

Some of the more aggressive advocacy organizations, such as the DCMJ in D.C., believe that there is a more direct route to legalization law-making and regulation: through acts of civil disobedience. They believe that the DPA and similar advocate organizations move too slowly, and are missing opportunities to push the legalization agenda.

Its not an either-or thing, Nadelmann said. Effective advocacy typically involves [a] combination of sophisticated grass roots and grass tops advocacy in support of a strategic agenda. I think that street theater [civil disobedience] can play a valuable role in advancing that agenda, but can also set it backwards sometimes.

In an op-ed column published by the New York Times in late February, Nadelmann wrote that the new administration has cast a chill over the legal and regulated marijuana industry by challenging the ability of state authorities to regulate the industry.

But a recently formed Congressional Cannabis Caucus, created by two Democrat and two Republican congressmen, gives momentum to legislation efforts by creating an opportunity to embark on more effective bi-partisan action.

Renewing the Earl Blumenauer amendment (to deschedule marijuana and regulate it like alcohol), and then reintroducing the McClintock Polis amendment (to prevent the Department of Justice from interfering in state marijuana laws) and getting that passed by Congress has to be a significant part of the legalization work done in 2017, Nadelmann said.

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ETHAN NADELMANN'S FIGHT AGAINST THE WAR ON DRUGS: New administration, New Challenges - Dope Magazine

Many currently illegal drugs, such as marijuana, opium, coca, and psychedelics have been used for thousands of years for both medical and spiritual purposes. So why are some drugs legal and other drugs illegal today? The war on drugs is not based on any scientific assessment of the relative risks of these drugs but it has everything to do with who is associated with these drugs.

The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants. The first anti-cocaine laws in the early 1900s were directed at black men in the South. The first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s and 20s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans. Today, Latino and especially black communities are still subject to wildly disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing practices.

In the 1960s, as drugs became symbols of youthful rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent, the government halted scientific research to evaluate their medical safety and efficacy.

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a war on drugs. He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants.

A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, later admitted: You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what Im saying. We knew we couldnt make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending review by a commission he appointed led by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer.

In 1972, the commission unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations.

Between 1973 and 1977, however, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession. In January 1977, President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated on a campaign platform that included marijuana decriminalization. In October 1977, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use.

Within just a few years, though, the tide had shifted. Proposals to decriminalize marijuana were abandoned as parents became increasingly concerned about high rates of teen marijuana use. Marijuana was ultimately caught up in a broader cultural backlash against the perceived permissiveness of the 1970s.

The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the start of a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997.

Public concern about illicit drug use built throughout the 1980s, largely due to media portrayals of people addicted to the smokeable form of cocaine dubbed crack. Soon after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his wife, Nancy Reagan, began a highly-publicized anti-drug campaign, coining the slogan Just Say No.

This set the stage for the zero tolerance policies implemented in the mid-to-late 1980s. Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, who believed that casual drug users should be taken out and shot, founded the DARE drug education program, which was quickly adopted nationwide despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness. The increasingly harsh drug policies also blocked the expansion of syringe access programs and other harm reduction policies to reduce the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS.

In the late 1980s, a political hysteria about drugs led to the passage of draconian penalties in Congress and state legislatures that rapidly increased the prison population. In 1985, the proportion of Americans polled who saw drug abuse as the nations number one problem was just 2-6 percent. The figure grew through the remainder of the 1980s until, in September 1989, it reached a remarkable 64 percent one of the most intense fixations by the American public on any issue in polling history. Within less than a year, however, the figure plummeted to less than 10 percent, as the media lost interest. The draconian policies enacted during the hysteria remained, however, and continued to result in escalating levels of arrests and incarceration.

Although Bill Clinton advocated for treatment instead of incarceration during his 1992 presidential campaign, after his first few months in the White House he reverted to the drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors by continuing to escalate the drug war. Notoriously, Clinton rejected a U.S. Sentencing Commission recommendation to eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

He also rejected, with the encouragement of drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, Health Secretary Donna Shalalas advice to end the federal ban on funding for syringe access programs. Yet, a month before leaving office, Clinton asserted in a Rolling Stone interview that we really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment of people who use drugs, and said that marijuana use should be decriminalized.

At the height of the drug war hysteria in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a movement emerged seeking a new approach to drug policy. In 1987, Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese founded the Drug Policy Foundation describing it as the loyal opposition to the war on drugs. Prominent conservatives such as William Buckley and Milton Friedman had long advocated for ending drug prohibition, as had civil libertarians such as longtime ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser. In the late 1980s they were joined by Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, Federal Judge Robert Sweet, Princeton professor Ethan Nadelmann, and other activists, scholars and policymakers.

In 1994, Nadelmann founded The Lindesmith Center as the first U.S. project of George Soros Open Society Institute. In 2000, the growing Center merged with the Drug Policy Foundation to create the Drug Policy Alliance.

George W. Bush arrived in the White House as the drug war was running out of steam yet he allocated more money than ever to it. His drug czar, John Walters, zealously focused on marijuana and launched a major campaign to promote student drug testing. While rates of illicit drug use remained constant, overdose fatalities rose rapidly.

The era of George W. Bush also witnessed the rapid escalation of the militarization of domestic drug law enforcement. By the end of Bushs term, there were about 40,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids on Americans every year mostly for nonviolent drug law offenses, often misdemeanors. While federal reform mostly stalled under Bush, state-level reforms finally began to slow the growth of the drug war.

Politicians now routinely admit to having used marijuana, and even cocaine, when they were younger. When Michael Bloomberg was questioned during his 2001 mayoral campaign about whether he had ever used marijuana, he said, You bet I did and I enjoyed it. Barack Obama also candidly discussed his prior cocaine and marijuana use: When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently that was the point.

Public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of sensible reforms that expand health-based approaches while reducing the role of criminalization in drug policy.

Marijuana reform has gained unprecedented momentum throughout the Americas. Alaska, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Washington State, and Washington D.C. have legalized marijuana for adults. In December 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legally regulate marijuana. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans legalize marijuana for adults by 2018.

In response to a worsening overdose epidemic, dozens of U.S. states passed laws to increase access to the overdose antidote, naloxone, as well as 911 Good Samaritan laws to encourage people to seek medical help in the event of an overdose.

Yet the assault on American citizens and others continues, with 700,000 people still arrested for marijuana offenses each year and almost 500,000 people still behind bars for nothing more than a drug law violation.

President Obama, despite supporting several successful policy changes such as reducing the crack/powder sentencing disparity, ending the ban on federal funding for syringe access programs, and ending federal interference with state medical marijuana laws did not shift the majority of drug policy funding to a health-based approach.

Now, the new administration is threatening to take us backward toward a 1980s style drug war. President Trump is calling for a wall to keep drugs out of the country, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made it clear that he does not support the sovereignty of states to legalize marijuana, and believes good people dont smoke marijuana.

Progress is inevitably slow, and even with an administration hostile to reform there is still unprecedented momentum behind drug policy reform in states and localities across the country. The Drug Policy Alliance and its allies will continue to advocate for health-based reforms such as marijuana legalization, drug decriminalization, safe consumption sites, naloxone access, bail reform, and more.

We look forward to a future where drug policies are shaped by science and compassion rather than political hysteria.

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A Brief History Of The War On Drugs And What It Means For ... - The Fresh Toast

Budget 2017: the big news in welfare

TREASURER Scott Morrison has declared war on drug addicts, dole bludgers and cheats.

In a Budget that promises to claw back more than $632 million from the welfare system, Mr Morrison has unveiled tough new rules that will penalise Australians on Centrelink payments who battle with substance abuse.

We want to support job seekers affected by drug and alcohol abuse, but to protect taxpayers, it has to be a two-way street, Mr Morrison said in his speech.

We will no longer accept, as an excuse from repeat offenders, that the reason they could not meet their mutual obligation requirements was because they were drunk or drug affected.

The crackdown will include penalties for those who fail to turn up to appointments or work-for-the-dole placements due to intoxication, with payments to be reduced or cancelled.

Under the reforms, drug addicts and alcoholics will be ineligible for disability pensions for medical conditions caused solely by their own substance abuse.

The Government will also launch a drug testing trial among 5000 new welfare recipients. Those who test positive to illicit drugs will have their welfare payments placed onto a cashless debit card, which can only be used to pay for legitimate living expenses.

THREE STRIKES RULE

Any unemployed person receiving a benefit who does not show up for an appointment without a reasonable excuse will have their payment suspended until they re-engage with their job services provider, with demerit points to be accrued for each incident.

If four demerit points are accrued within six months, the job seeker will be placed on a three strikes and youre out intensive compliance program.

Then, if they breach their obligations again, theyll lose 50 per cent of their fortnightly payment for the first strike, 100 per cent for their second, and have their payment suspended for four weeks for their third strike.

Centrelinks new compliance framework will further penalise claimants who miss appointments and fail to update their information by removing backdating provisions.

We will continue to stop people trying to take an easy ride on our welfare system to protect it for those who need it most, Mr Morrison said.

The best way to get your welfare budget under control is to get Australians off welfare and into work.

Mr Morrison said drug-affected welfare recipients may be subjected to further tests and possible referral for treatment, promising that the Centrelink reforms would simplify the compliance system and provide vulnerable people with support by ensuring appropriate, individualised assessments which would take into account individual circumstances to ensure that people with genuine issues are not unfairly penalised.

Existing cashless card trials in Ceduna, South Australia and the East Kimberley, Western Australia will be extended until June 2018, with two extra locations to be added in September.

SINGLE PARENTS AND IMMIGRANTS

Centrelink will tighten regulation of Australians collecting single parent payments, cracking down on those who fraudulently collect multiple payments.

This could mean single-parent households will be subjected to closer scrutiny to verify their relationship status.

New migrants will be subjected to stricter residency rules before they can access and aged pension or disability pension, saving the budget $119 million over five years.

From July 2018, claimants must be able to prove 15 years of continuous Australian residence before they will be eligible, unless they have 10 years residence with five years of those years spent working or otherwise supporting themselves without government assistance.

On the plus side, dealing with Centrelink may become simpler for some, with the budget including $5.5 million worth of measures to cut red tape and improve information sharing between departments.

The agencys call centre will get an extra 250 workers in a pilot aimed at slashing call waiting times.

Claimants will now have to provide their tax file numbers when they first lodge claims, enabling the department to cross-reference information with the Australian Taxation Office.

dana.mccauley@news.com.au

Excerpt from:

Budget's war on drugs as Treasurer Scott Morrison warns welfare recipients: 'It's a two-way street' - NEWS.com.au

Facing the UN's rights body in Geneva on Monday, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano of the Philippines attempted to use a slideshow and video clips to prove that President Rodrigo Duterte is acting within his rights in a "war on drugs" that haskilled thousands of people. Cayetano said nearly 1.3 million people who have used or dealt illegal drugs had surrendered voluntarily, and that only a small fraction put up violent resistance.

"One: There is no state-sponsored killing in the Philippines," Cayetano said, seeking to put the issue to bed from the start. "Two: There is no sudden wave of killings."

Cayetano claimed that officers had killed 2,692 people in the 11 months since Duterte took office. He pointed out that national law legitimates deaths during police operations.

Other estimates suggest the figure is much higher, however. The US group Human Rights Watch, for example, has tabulated 7,000 deaths during Duterte's crackdown.

Is Duterte 'excellent'?

Following Cayetano's remarks, delegations had a minute each to critique Duterte's rights record. A delegate from China cited Cayetano's "very convincing" remarks and the challenges faced by China and other "developing countries" in fighting the drugs trade.

Other delegates criticized the frequent extrajudicial killings, violence against journalists and the prospect that Duterte could formally reinstate executions. The Germanenvoy, for example, said the Philippines must take "all necessary measures" to stop extrajudicial killings, and the Vaticancalled reports of enforced disappearances "deeply troubling."

The 47-member council, which the Philippines holds a seat on, regularly reviews the rights records of the 193 UN countries. The current two-week review session focuses on 14 countries, including Britain, India and South Africa. Several members - such as Britain, China, Cuba, Egypt, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the US - have previously earned criticism for their own rights records.

A poll of 1,200 Filipinos released Monday found that Duterte maintains an "excellent" trust rating, with 80 percent giving him the highest score in a survey that focuses on personality rather than policy. The pollster Social Weather Stations has tracked Duterte's trust rating since he began his run for the presidency in December 2015.

As a candidate, Duterte started off with a 47 percent rating; he peaked with 84 percent a week before he took office late last June, and has lost a point since the last survey. Pollsters did not ask respondents to give a reason for their ratings.

Last week, US President Donald Trump set off an uproar in Washington by inviting Duterte to the White Housedespite rights groups' criticism of his policies and the deaths that have ensued.

mkg/rt (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)

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Philippine 'war on drugs' comes under fire at UN Human Rights Council - Deutsche Welle

Tests to determine the cause of Valerie Williams death were being conducted this week. Can there be any reasonable doubt the 25-year-old Wellsburg womans life was claimed, directly or indirectly, by the drug abuse scourge in our states?

Williams was arrested about a week ago in Jefferson County, on driving-related and drug charges. She had cocaine, heroin, a crack pipe and a hypodermic needle with her.

So, when she was taken to the Jefferson County jail, she was placed in a detoxification program immediately. Sheriff Fred Abdalla said she had been taking appropriate medicine every day.

Yet on Friday night, her cellmate discovered her lifeless body.

Precisely what killed her will be determined by various tests. It is virtually inconceivable illegal drugs did not play some part in her demise.

Illegal drugs are killing thousands of West Virginians and Ohioans every year. The crisis has mushroomed to such an extent in the Buckeye State that earlier this year, some county coroners reported it had caused them to run out of room to store bodies.

Both our states are in the top five of those with the most drug overdose deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. West Virginia is well in the lead, with an annual count of 41.5 overdose deaths per 100,000 in population. Ohio is four, at 29.9 (others in the top five are Kentucky, New Hampshire and Rhode Island).

Law enforcement officials in both our states have mounted all-out offensives against drug dealers. Legislators are providing more money for treatment to help addicts.

Consider Williams case. Here was a young woman who, thanks to being arrested, was getting help for her addiction. Yet, at just 25 years of age, it probably killed her.

Obviously, were not winning the war on drugs.

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Still Losing War on Drugs - Wheeling Intelligencer

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Violence in Mexico's US-Fueled War on Drugs Escalates - teleSUR English

Washington, DC(ENEWSPF)May 8, 2017

By: Grant Smith

America and the world have learned hard lessons about the failings of the war on drugs.

For too long, we saw drugs as an invasion to be repelled rather than as a public health crisis to be answered. We treated drug addiction as a crime, not as a health issue. We incarcerated too many drug users and attacked the supply side of the problem, largely ignoring the demand.

But now, at the very moment weve reached a broad, bipartisan consensus and begun to reform our overly punitive policies at the state and federal level, President Trump is poised to turn back the clock. It is difficult to overstate what a major historical misstep this would be, and how many lives could get chewed up and spit out by the new throwback approach.

Late last month, Trump had what the White House called a very friendly talk with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, in which Trump invited his Filipino counterpart to the White House.

Duterte has incited civilians to engage in the extrajudicial killing of more than 4,000 drug abusers; last year, he compared himself positively to Adolf Hitler, saying he would be happy to slaughter 3 million drug addicts, just as Hitler killed millions of Jews.

In his phone call with Duterte, Trump reportedly praised his Filipino counterpart as the right way to attack drug misuse. That is an astonishing endorsement.

No one is suggesting that Trump intends to import Dutertes brutal, morally repugnant approach to drugs to Americas domestic struggle with narcotics. But we do know that in significant ways, Trump is bringing a dangerously retrograde approach to the issue.

The warning signs were evident the day Donald Trump descended an escalator and announced his presidential bid in 2015. It was then that Trump stoked the fear and resentment toward immigrants residing and working in the United States and first made the call for a wall along the Mexican border that has become a theme of his presidency.

When Mexico sends its people, said Trump, theyre not sending their bestTheyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime.And its got to stop and its got to stop fast.

Whether he knew it at the time or not, Trumps call for a border wall to keep drugs and immigrants out of the country came straight out of the same political playbook that President Richard Nixon used when he declared the first war on drugs more than four decades ago.

As Nixons advisor John Ehrlichman admitted in a 1994 interview, the true motivation for Nixons war on drugs was to channel white middle-class fear and distrust of blacks and war protesters toward a hatred of the drugs these groups were perceived to be using. By launching a war on drugs, Nixon was able to declare war on entire communities that he despised.

Then, on the 2016 campaign trail, another element entered. Trump must have seen an opportunity to tie the fear and resentment of immigrants felt by voters in places devastated by the opioid epidemic.

And so, appealing directly to predominately rural and suburban white voters in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, Trump and his campaign viciously exploited sentiments that immigrants have stolen jobs from these communities, constructing a completely false narrative that Latinos and other immigrants are responsible for the hardship that drug addiction, unemployment and other social problems have wrought on these communities.

The President built his political base by converging peoples fears about the opioid crisis with resentment toward immigrant groups. In much the same way that Nixon used drugs as a catalyst for striking at his enemies, Trump is now doing the same.

Now, as President, Trump has leaned hard on his campaign promise to build a wall and stop the drugs from pouring in. As he told a room full of police chiefs in February, were going to be ruthless in that fight. We have no choice.

To wage this fight, Trump has filled top positions in his cabinet with hardliners on drug issues.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is perhaps the hardest of the hardliners. A former prosecutor from Alabama who has long believed that the way to reduce demand for illicit drugs is by sending more people to prison and drilling just say no into young peoples brains, Sessions was one of the biggest opponents in Congress to bipartisan drug sentencing reform.

Since his Senate confirmation, Sessions has signaled a reversal of Obama-era policies at the Department of Justice that encouraged federal prosecutors to use discretion in seeking mandatory minimum sentences and has promised a new intensity to drug enforcement.

A new intensity that will likely mean more aggressive efforts by federal prosecutors to throw the book at drug offenders, carrying out Sessions order to use every tool we have to crack down. Communities long scarred by decades of drug war policing will see more disruption, and more families will be torn apart. Prisons already overcrowded with drug offenders will become more packed with people who belong in treatment and diversion programs instead. Taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for Sessions ruinous intentions.

Another way this fight is manifesting itself: an aggressive move to deport people with any history of drug arrests whatsoever, no matter the drug and no matter the crime.

John Kelly, head of the Trump administrations agency charged with immigration enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, has also vowed to make marijuana a major part of its enforcement efforts against immigrants.

U.S. drug prohibition laws therefore make tens of thousands of noncitizens eligible for deportation every year, even when the drug charges that triggered deportation are dismissed by a court. In this way, the machinery of this countrys entrenched drug war could be a major weapon in Trumps politically motivated war against immigrants.

Its not as though Trump ignores the need for treatment entirely. He has made sweeping promises that under his leadership he will fight to increase access to life-saving treatment to battle the addiction to drugs, with a special focus on the exploding opioid addiction thats wreaking havoc in so many communities.

In March, he invited people who struggled with opioid addiction to the White House and launched a task force, being led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, to recommend ways the federal government should respond to the opioid crisis.

We want to help those who have become so badly addicted, said Trump.

The President doesnt need a commission to study the opioid crisis when there is a mountain of evidence that shows what works. Communities struggling under the weight of the opioid crisis need more funding for treatment, housing, harm reduction and other supports essential to keeping people alive and on the road to recovery.

New York City is among many urban communities that have been severely affected for a long time. It would require real leadership from Trump to push for the treatment funding and policy changes needed to deliver real results. Instead, the country waits for a panels recommendations, and undoubtedly more people will tragically and needlessly die waiting.

The perfect early test of whether the Presidents rhetoric on treatment was hollow or substantive was in health care reform. Trump failed.

His push to replace parts of Obamacare with the American Health Care Act would eliminate health care for millions of people acutely vulnerable to opioid dependence. This legislation would hit states that have some of the highest opioid overdose rates in the country, like Kentucky and West Virginia, especially hard.

Nearly 3 million people got treatment coverage from an expansion of the federal health insurance program known as Medicaid that they didnt have before Obamacare became law in 2010.

The Trump administration recklessly signed off on House Speaker Paul Ryans American Health Care Act, which passed the House on Thursday, knowing that it could jeopardize the ability of millions of people struggling with substance use disorder to keep health insurance that will cover the cost of accessing treatment and mental health care.

The dramatic failure of lock em up drug policies is clear to all who have studied the problem or, really, just about anyone whos lived in America these last 40 years.

Two generations of intensifying war on illegal drug markets made little difference in the price or availability of illicit drugs. The toughest drug sentences have not made a dent in drug demand.

Instead, an outraged public has turned against the war on drugs. By 2014, two out of three Americans supported ending prosecution for drug possession, and today 60% of Americans support legalizing marijuana.

These numbers should be a warning to Trump that pursuing a revival in the war on drugs would be a serious mistake both politically and fiscally.

Trump also risks alienating his own party if he pushes too hard. A strong bipartisan voting bloc in Congress has consistently supported letting states set their own marijuana policies, and just this week, Congress denied Sessions the federal money to prosecute medical marijuana patients and dispensaries in states where medicinal trade is legal.

Congressional leaders came close last year to reforming some of the harshest mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses, and have indicated plans to try again soon. This is something that both Trump voters and law enforcement appear to agree on.

Trump voters expressed strong support for criminal justice reform in a recent poll, and nearly 200 law enforcement leaders across the country recently called on the White House to continue pushing for drug sentencing reform.

Incarcerating drug offenders isnt only bad public policy; its very expensive for taxpayers.

All of that is why the Obama administration took serious strides to move the country away from some of the most draconian aspects of the drug war, directing federal prosecutions to seek mandatory sentences for drug offenders more sparingly, and taking steps to recognize drug addiction as a health issue.

Ignoring all this wisdom, threatening all this progress, Trump seems to believe, deep in his gut, that the key to winning the war on drugs is a border wall and a law-enforcement crackdown.

Authorities havent been successful at keeping drugs out of maximum security prisons, let alone the third-largest landmass in the world. No border wall will impede the illicit drug trade. And no escalated federal enforcement effort will reduce the demand for powerful narcotics.

Grant Smith is deputy director of national affairs with the Drug Policy Alliance in Washington.

This article appeared in the NY Daily News at: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/addicted-war-drugs-article-1.3140663

Source: http://drugpolicy.org

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Addicted to the War on Drugs: Just as We Were Wising Up, President Trump has Us Back In an Old-style Fight Against ... - eNews Park Forest (press...

We see it in the news constantly: The drug abuse epidemic. Sometimes its heroin. Sometimes its meth. Sometimes its prescription drug abuse. But the results seem to be the same. Those addicted tend to neglect their job, their family and themselves. Emergency rooms and emergency medical responders are seeing more and more of these people overdose.

Our societys response is to treat it like a criminal problem instead of a medical problem. And weve been doing it that way for 46 years. We declared a War-On-Drugs in 1971, aggressively sent the police after users and dealers to get them off the streets. We tried to teach drug users and drug dealers a lesson by making the punishment so awful it would deter others. We made judges hand out mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug-related convictions. We allowed police to conduct civil asset forfeiture.

Despite these aggressive policies and enforcement actions, illicit drug trade is worse than ever. In 2008, only 81 tons of the 450 tons of heroin trafficked that year was seized. And that same year 865 tons of cocaine was trafficked worldwide, 165 tons of which was consumed in the United States (more than any other nation). In 2009 drug use was responsible for more than 37,000 deaths in the U.S., which exceeded traffic accident deaths that year. Over the past decade drug-related deaths have doubled, even though all other causes of death declined. In other words, the War-On-Drugs has failed its primary objective (despite receiving over $1 trillion in funding since 1971).

What it has succeeded in doing is fill up our prisons and jails to bursting. In 1974 there were 218,466 inmates in all federal prisons, state prisons, and local jails. By 2014 it exploded to 1,508,636 (600 percent increase). According to a study by Jonathan Rothwell, a senior economist at Gallup, more people are now admitted to prisons for drug crimes each year than for violent crimes or for property crimes. The cost on the taxpayer to house and care for these inmates is now $12.6 billion a year.

Treating drug abuse as a criminal problem instead of a medical problem is making it worse not better. Our goal should be recovery so that the previously addicted person can overcome addiction, where he gets his life back on track. However, once we as a society label that person a felon, we make it infinitely harder for him to do that. When he is tries to get a job, on job applications he is forced to check the box labeled Have you ever been convicted of a felony? If he is trying to better his life by going to college, he is ineligible to receive financial aid to pay for college because felons arent eligible for financial aid. We are putting obstacles in the way of achieving our goal.

What are we hoping to accomplish by continuing this failed War-On-Drugs policy? The last 46 years has proven that even if we pass a plethora of get-tough-on-drugs laws, spend a trillion dollars, and put 600 percent more people behind bars, it will not decrease the number of people getting drugs and getting addicted to drugs. Instead, we need to treat it as a medical and mental health problem, not a criminal problem. The first step to doing this is ending the War-On-Drugs and all the problems it created. This will allow our society to then focus our resources toward addiction treatment, recovery, and prevention, and actually solving the problem.

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What's the War-On-Drugs endgame? - Journal Review

(Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks, as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (L) looks on, during Trump's five state primary night event in New York City, U.S., April 26, 2016.Reuters/Carlo Allegri) The Trump administrationplans tocut 96% of the budget ofthe Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), effectively eliminating the federal agency that has traditionally been used to spearhead the war on drugs, according to multiple media reports.

The White House Office of Management and Budget's proposed fiscal year 2018 budget reduces the funding request for ONDCP from $388 million in 2017 to $24 million, according to a leaked memofirstreported by CBS News.

The cuts would eliminate approximately half ONDCP's staff, around 33 employees, as well as "intelligence, research and budget functionsat the agency, as well as the Model State Drug Laws and Drug Court grant programs,"CBS reported Friday.

"These cuts are frankly heartbreaking and, if carried out, cause us to lose many good people who contribute greatly to ONDCP's mission and core activities," Acting Director Richard Baumwrote in an email to ONDCP staff obtained by CBS.

Baum added that news is "discouraging," but told staff "not to panic" and that "events are unfolding."

In addition, the budget proposes to eliminate multiple grant programs administered by ONDCP, including theHigh Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program and the Drug-Free Communities Supportprogram, which the memo called "duplicative of other efforts across the Federal government and supplant State and local responsibilities."

Staff was notified of the budget cuts on Friday. Baum, who was aware of the impendingcuts last week, had reportedly been lobbying Jared Kushner, Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, to keep the agency's budget intact.

In February, when rumors first began circulating that Trump might cut ONDCP's budget, a coalition of medical and drug policy organizations sent a letter toMick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, urging for ONDCP to remain at the center of efforts to fight drug use.

"At a time when drugs now kill more people than firearms or car crashes, it is more important than ever for ONDCP to remain a strong voice in the White House and a visible presence nationally," the letter read.

But some drug policy experts are cautiously optimistic at the agency's elimination.

"Unfortunately, the ONDCP has a history of advancing predominatively counter-productive policies,"Grant Smith,deputy director of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, told Business Insider, notingthat DPA has supported the "dismantling" of the agency.

Smith noted that elimination of theagency could actually accelerate efforts to treat drug use as a public health, rather than criminal issue, if it means less funding for programs like HIDTA.

But that depends, Smith said, on ifthe nation's drug policy is in the hands of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has called for cracking down on drug offenders, or someone else.

The ONDCP was first created in 1988 by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act at the height of the crack epidemic and the so-called War on Drugs.

Tom Angell, the founder ofpro- marijuana legalization group Marijuana Majority, told Business Insiderthat it was only during the last years of the Obama Administration, under the direction of then-ONDCP director Michael Botticelli, that the agency made positive efforts towards harm reduction and treatment policies. Traditionally, according to Smith, the agency has been at the forefront of efforts to prosecute and stigmatize drug use.

ONDCP's proposed elimination comes after Trump signed an executive order in March to establish a national commission to address the opioid crisis, headed by New Jersey Gov.Chris Christie. The commission, which was due to receive "administrative support" from ONDCP, was tasked with coming up with strategies to address the crisis.

Many experts said the president's action is "underwhelming."

The reportscome one day after Rep. Tom Marino announced that he was withdrawing from consideration for the appointment of ONDCP director, the position more informallyknown as the Drug Czar, after more than a month of speculation that he would serve. The Pennsylvania Republican was one of Trumps earliest supporters in Congress.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

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