Category Archives: War On Drugs

Whether that approach continues is something of an open question. Former drug czars from a more militant drug policy era have been publicly agitating to "bring back the war on drugs." Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is moving to put criminal justice back at the forefront of drug policy.

Marino appears to be in that camp as well, but his views are unlikely to influence the administration's policy in the same ways Sessions' views do. That's because the drug czar's office has traditionally played a limited role in setting policy --instead, it coordinates drug control strategy and funding across the federal government.

Still, with the selection of Marino, another piece of Trump's drug control strategy falls into place. In Congress, Marino voted multiple times against a bipartisan measure to prevent the Justice Department from going after state-legal medical marijuana businesses. (The measure ultimately passed.)

Similarly, he voted against a measure to allow Veterans Affairs doctors to recommend medical marijuana to their patients, as well as against a separate measure to loosen federal restrictions on hemp, a nonpsychoactive variant of the cannabis plant with potential industrial applications.

Those votes place Marino well to the right of dozens of his Republican House colleagues who supported the measures. He also voted against a measure that would loosen some restrictions on CBD oil, a nonpsychoactive derivative of the cannabis plant that holds promise for treating severe forms of childhood epilepsy.

Asked about marijuana legalization last fall, Marino told a reporter that "the only way I would agree to consider legalizing marijuana is if we had a really in depth-medical scientific study. If it does help people one way or another, then produce it in pill form." But, he added, "I think it's a states' rights issue."

As a congressman, Marino called for a national program of mandatory inpatient substance abuse treatment for nonviolent drug offenders. "One treatment option I have advocated for years would be placing nondealer, nonviolent drug abusers in a secured hospital-type setting under the constant care of health professionals," he said at a hearing last year.

"Once the person agrees to plead guilty to possession, he or she will be placed in an intensive treatment program until experts determine that they should be released under intense supervision," Marino explained. "If this is accomplished, then the charges are dropped against that person. The charges are only filed to have an incentive for that person to enter the hospital-slash-prison, if you want to call it."

Forced inpatient treatment in a hospital-slash-prison would presumably include drug users who are not necessarily drug abusers. Only about 21 percent of current marijuana users meet diagnostic criteria for abuse or dependence, for instance. The other 79 percent do not need treatment for their drug use.

Marino acknowledged that implementing such a policy nationwide would "take a lot of money."

Whether he'll push for such a strategy as drug czar remains an open question. Beyond that, the office's track record on meeting its drug policy goals is not the greatest. In 2010, the office set a series of ambitious goals to reduce overall drug use, overdoses and drugged-driving incidents. A 2015 Government Accountability Office report concluded that it failed to meet any of them.

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Reported new White House drug czar aligned with 'war on drugs' backers - Salt Lake Tribune

This article first appeared on the Cato Institute site.

As a candidate, Donald Trump held a relatively moderate line on drug prohibition, often arguing that issues like marijuana legalization should be left to state governments.

His selection of Jeff Sessions as attorney general, however, sent an entirely different message. Sessions is a longtime champion of the federal drug war, and since taking over the Justice Department he has continued to make statements that hint at a return to a much harsher federal approach to drug prohibition.

Related: What Jeff Sessions has said about marijuana

The Washington Post ran a story last weekend detailing some of the shifts taking place at the Department of Justice, including a green light for federal prosecutors to step up prosecutions for low-level offenses and to rely on heavy mandatory minimums to leverage plea deals.

Sessions is also expected to take a harder line on the punishment for using and distributing marijuana, a drug he has long abhorred. His crime task force will review existing marijuana policy, according to a memo he wrote prosecutors last week.

The Post story also highlights the central role of Steven H. Cook, a former police officer and federal prosecutor, within the Sessions Department of Justice. Cook has been traveling with Sessions as the attorney general makes the case for a return to the tough-on-crime posture of the '80s and '90s, arguing that efforts to treat even low-level drug offenses as anything less than violent crimes are misguided and soft.

Related: Is the White House serious about cracking down on weed?

Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, expressed his alarm to the Post:

If there was a flickering candle of hope that remained for sentencing reform, Cooks appointment was a fire hose. There simply arent enough backhoes to build all the prisons it would take to realize Steve Cooks vision for America.

Cook, like Sessions, believes that the drug market is inherently violent and therefore the only response is to crack down:

Drug trafficking is inherently violent. Drug traffickers are dealing in a heavy cash business. They cant resolve disputes in court. They resolve the disputes on the street, and they resolve them through violence.

Its true that the black market for drugs relies on cash transactions and violence, but Cook and Sessions ignore the obvious implication. The drug market has to rely on cash transfers and violence because drugs are illegal. Drug market violence is a function of the markets illegality, not of the drugs themselves.

A worker waters cannabis plants on Steve Dillon's farm in Humboldt County, California, on August 28, 2016. Adam Bates writes that Justice Secretary Jeff Sessions is a long-time champion of the federal drug war, and since taking over the Justice Department, he has continued to make statements that hint at a return to a much harsher federal approach to drug prohibition. Rory Carroll/reuters

The same was true of alcohol distributors under prohibition. In 2017, if two alcohol distributors have a dispute, they settle it in court. If two alcohol distributors in 1929 had a dispute, they settled it on the street corner with Tommy guns and Molotov cocktails.

Drug trafficking isnt inherently violent; drug prohibition is.

The Trump administration has yet to announce much in the way of concrete policy changes, but the personnel choices and the drug warrior rhetoric coming from the new administration are causes for concern looking forward.

Adam Bates is a policy analyst with Catos Project on Criminal Justice.

For more on drug policy recommendations, the Director of Catos Project on Criminal Justice Tim Lynch recently produced a chapter on the federal drug war for Catos Handbook for Policymakers. The chapter calls for the repeal of the federal Controlled Substances Actand the abolition of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Those with an interest in the mass incarceration problem in America may also be interested in an upcoming book forum featuring Fordham law professor John Pfaff, whose new book argues that local prosecutors are a primary and underappreciated force behind mass incarceration. The forum will take place at the Cato Institute on April 26.

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No Good Will Come of Sessions Reigniting the War on Drugs - Newsweek

Senior Superintendent Eduardo Acierto and Chief Inspector Nelson Bautista. (Photo courtesy of UNTV.)

MANILA The Sandiganbayan has granted travel permission to a high-ranking police official facing graft chargeswho invoked the Duterte governments war on drugs in his travel motion.

Senior Supt. Eduardo Acierto, officer-in-charge deputy director for administration of the Philippine National Police Drug Enforcement Group (PNP-DEG), said he would attend an operational meeting with the Taiwan Coast Guard next week.

His motion, however, still states his position as OIC-DDA of the now-abolished Anti-Illegal Drugs Group (PNP-AIDG).

Aciertos motion stated he has been scheduled to visit Taipei in the interest of the national campaign against illegal drugs headed by no less than the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo R. Duterte.

The anti-graft courts Sixth Division on April 6 allowed Acierto to leave the country from April 16 to 20, reporters learned on Tuesday.

As former chief of the Firearms and Explosives Offices Firearms and Licensing Division (FEO-FLD), Acierto was one of the police officials charged with graft in connection with the award of the exclusive license delivery contract to Werfast Documentary Agency, Inc.

This was despite the firms alleged failure to meet various requirements such as registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, delivery authorization from the then-Department of Transportation and Communications, and accreditation from the Department of Science and Technology.

The Ombudsman in June 2015 also meted the penalty of dismissal to Acierto and the other police officials after finding them guilty of the administrative offenses of grave misconduct, serious dishonesty and grave abuse of authority.

But, the Court of Appeals on Feb. 12, 2016 reversed the decision and ordered Aciertos reinstatement. Later on, Acierto was appointed to the high-ranking position at the AIDG, which was disbanded in January in the aftermath of the killing of South Korean national Jee Ick-joo at Camp Crame.

It is an accepted fact in this case that accused Acierto, as a reinstated officer of the PNP, would be invited to several meetings, symposiums, or seminars in relation to his duties as OIC, DDA, AIDG, his motion read. SFM

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Police official with graft case allowed to travel for 'war on drugs' - Inquirer.net

Along with celibacy, eugenics and botox, the war on drugs has to be one of humanity's worst attempts to control our biology. What began with the prohibition movement against alcohol in the 1920s has become subsequent moral and political attacks on marijuana, cocaine, heroin and now amphetamines (aka ice).

This quixotic mission of the past hundred years has failed to prevent the use of drugs so significantly that there is now a black market that generates over $1 trillion a year in revenue from the US alone -- roughly the same revenue as the entire global pharmaceutical industry.

We now have some countries that are waking up from the hangover of a century of bad policy. Countries like Portugal, Canada and parts of the US are starting to create approaches that reflect a changing social sentiment in our approach to recreational drugs.

I'm curious as to what we might learn and apply in Australia, so this year I'm on a quest to interview some of the world's greatest minds to imagine what a post-war-on-drugs world might look like in our own country.

I'm doing this because I think our approach to drugs in Australia is irrational. On one hand, it's okay to hand out amphetamines (ritalin) for ADHD but then, on the other, we ask Australians to dob in their dealer for handing out very similar chemical compounds on a weekend.

On one hand we deny clean needles to heroin users but on the other hand we allow people to become clinically addicted to pain medication (or hillbilly heroin as it has come to be known).

We love prime ministers who can skol beer, but we vilify young people in the media as 'binge drinkers' for doing the exact same thing on a Saturday night.

So what should we do? How do we make rational drug choices as individuals? How do we make rational drug policies as a community? I am on a mission to have some honest conversations with people who might have a few ideas for what we should do.

My first interviewee is the Oxford philosopher AC Grayling. Professor Grayling is a world-renowned author, lecturer and proponent of the idea that we should legalise all drugs. I caught up with him in a Sydney cafe this week to talk about his new book The Age of Genius, (which explores the creation of the modern mind in the 17th Century) to see what he might have to offer by way of philosophy when it comes to approaches to drug policy.

One of his ideas is that recreational drugs should be regulated in exactly the same way we regulate alcohol and nicotine. His argument for this approach is two-fold. First, the idea that the point of laws is to reduce the aggregate harms experienced rather than increase them, and second, the idea that in an autonomous society you have experimentation that actually moves a society forward.

Grayling contends that far from prevent the harms we are trying to avoid through their criminalisation, by making drugs illegal we inadvertently increase them:

"[Our current approach to drug laws] turn ordinary people into criminals. It wastes police time. It is an utter waste of resources. The anxiety of it is hard to understand. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog. People who are badly affected by drug use and abuse are mainly affected by the illegality of drugs in order to get hold of them."

Supporting this argument is the telling reality that, currently, over half of people in prisons are there because of the criminality of drugs. Moreover, research shows that over 50 percent of people who use illicit substances have a concurrent diagnosable mental health disorder. There is a great inequity in our society in which, although we are using drugs for the same biological reasons, when it comes down to it -- rich people go to rehab and poor people go to prison.

Grayling's second point is a more unconventional one; it is the idea that autonomy of choice actually helps us to push society forward through experimentation.

"I like the argument of Mill in his essay On Liberty -- it follows that if you allow people to make choices to try many things you get many different experiments and human possibilities and that way we will discover the best, we will discover the truth. Whereas if you narrow everything down and you try and control it you miss out on a great deal of what might be worthwhile."

This is an interesting idea. It raises the question that if there were more options than alcohol and nicotine for the drugs we use in our everyday life would the market find more efficient, less harmful drugs for the same purpose.

In pharmaceutical drugs we see generation after generation of drug development, but when it comes to recreational drugs we are stuck with the same few culprits. It's kind of like doctors using 1950's medication to deal with today's diseases. Just like we have reinvented anti-depressants, what if there was a similar investment in the reinvention of alcohol or nicotine that were tailored to different biologies?

I concluded my interview with AC Grayling with a question around what drugs he uses. He laughed at the question:

"I don't use drugs out of sheer timidity, because what passes for a brain up here is what I have for an instrument. Like having a violin and bashing it. But I've made up my mind that when I pass 90, I'm going to take up opium so I can go out in a high."

At 68, that's a couple of decades away. The question is, will he go out on a high or in handcuffs?

ALSO ON HUFFPOST AUSTRALIA

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The War On Drugs Has Failed. But What Should Peace Look Like? - Huffington Post Australia

Really? We can? Because that war was launched eight presidents and 46 years ago, and we don't seem to have made much progress.

"Last year we doubled down on the number of arrests, the number of search warrants, and the number of guns seized on search warrants related to heroin trafficking in Duluth. We did a tremendous job," Tusken argued. "Our violent crimes task force works around the clock to enforce the laws related to opioids."

However, the chief also opined that, "You can never arrest your way out of a drug problem. It can't be done. In 1971, (President) Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs. It's 2017, and we've not eradicated drugs in this country. You're not going to be able to arrest your way out."

But a three-pronged approach can be effective, Tusken said: "You have to do enforcement, a very important component of it. You have to do education. And you have to have treatment to get your community well."

Enforcement has been stepped up here in Duluth and across the Northland. Crime stats show it has been effective. Education is about to include a new and hopefully more-effective and less-criticized D.A.R.E. program with schoolkids, the chief said.

"And then there's the treatment component," he continued. "That's something we're lacking in our community. If you need treatment today, we can't get you in. ... It takes time, sometimes two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, to get you into a bed where you can get rehab, where you can get recovery."

So Duluth is winning on two of three fronts, according to the chief.

It was an assessment Mayor Emily Larson echoed at her State of the City Address last month. She listed addressing heroin, opioids and other drug woes among her top three priorities this year.

"Our commitment as a city is to work with St. Louis County, the Center for Alcohol and Drug Treatment, the 6th Judicial Court, local hospitals, and other partners to create an opioid withdrawal unit, a safe place for those who overdose and want help to go medically withdraw and be connected seamlessly to other support and resources," she said.

A summit is being planned for June to bring together political leaders, government officials, drug-treatment experts, educators, advocates, and others who can identify effective ways to counter opioid, heroin, and other drug use here.

"We're going to get into a room and we're going to figure out what that looks like, to make our community a little bit more responsive to and help start the healing process of this opioid epidemic in our city," Tusken said. "And it is an epidemic. It is killing people. It is very serious. And that is why we are spending so much time and resources trying to stem the tide of these poisons."

Deaths from heroin and opioid drug overdoses have more than doubled in St. Louis County in just the past few years. St. Louis County is now the deadliest county in Minnesota for opioid addicts, with 13.4 deaths per 100,000 population, according to Tusken.

He bristled at a suggestion from a luncheon attendee, though, of legalizing or decriminalizing drugs as a way to turn the toll.

"There are unintended consequences," he said, pointing to an uptick in traffic fatalities in Colorado after it legalized the recreational use of marijuana. His claim is backed up by FactCheck.org, which reported late last summer that from 2006 to 2014, marijuana-related traffic deaths increased by 154 percent, from 37 fatalities in 2006 to 94 in 2014.

Also, "Any time you legalize something, decriminalize something, (kids) are going to have more access to it," the chief warned. "Is (legalizing drugs) an approach that this country is going to have to look at, potentially, someday? Maybe. Maybe there'll be research to show that's the direction we should go. Right now, we're not there, certainly not there in this country. But we could be."

The Minnesota Legislature this year briefly discussed legalizing the recreational use of marijuana here. Such a move certainly would qualify as a new and different approach. That alone makes it worth at least considering. Clearly, what we've been doing during our more than 4-decade war on drugs hasn't been working.

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Our View: How to win war on drugs - Duluth News Tribune

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZLEZ: We turn now to look at how Attorney General Jeff Sessions is attempting to shake up policing in the country by limiting federal oversight of police departments with a history of civil rights violations, while calling for an escalation of the war on drugs. Last week, Sessions ordered a wide-ranging review of the federal governmentof the federal consent decrees with local law enforcement agencies that have been accused of brutality and violating civil rights laws. The review signals the Justice Department intends to shift away from monitoring and forcing changes within police departments, such as the police department of Ferguson, Missouri, where systematic racial discrimination by the police and the police killing of unarmed 18-year-old African American Michael Brown sparked an uprising in 2014.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes after Attorney General Jeff Sessions openly expressed concerns about efforts at police reform in a recent speech.

ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS: Unfortunately, in recent years, law enforcement, as a whole, I think, has been unfairly maligned and blamed for unacceptable deeds of a few bad actors. Youve got some 800,000 state and local law officers and federal officers in America. Imagine a city of 800,000. Are you not going to have people make mistakes, people who commit crimes out of that group? And so, were not perfect. We all know that. Department of Justice is going to fulfill its role to ensure that law enforcement officers are not out of control. And if they violate the law, they will be punished. But weve got to be careful about what were doing. We cannot malign entire departments. Too many of our officers, deputies and troopers believe the political leadership in this country has abandoned them. ...

I like that line from Pirates of Penzance, I think, Gilbert and Stewart [sic] old line, says, "When constabulary duties are to be done, to be done, the policemans lot is not a happy one." You know? Its no fun to go out and hammer somebody and see him go to jail. Nobody likes to do that. But its our duty. Its our lot.

AMY GOODMAN: During the same speech in Richmond, Virginia, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called for what many see as a new war on drugs.

ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS: We need to say, as Nancy Reagan said, "Just say no." Dont do it. ... And our nation needs to say clearly, once again, that using drugs is bad. It will destroy your life. In the 80s and 90s, we saw campaigns stressing prevention. ... We can do this again. Educating people and telling them the terrible truth about drugs and addiction will result in better choices by more people. We can reduce the use of drugs, save lives and turn back the surge in crime that inevitably follows in the wake of increased drug use.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, were joined by two guests: Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Norm Stamper, former chief of the Seattle Police Department and the author of the book To Protect and Serve: How to Fix Americas Police.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Sherrilyn, lets begin with you. Is this a new war on drugs? And can you talk about the judges decision?

SHERRILYN IFILL: Well, what we see with Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an effort to basically take us back in time. And you heard, you know, in the clip that you just posted, I mean, he talks about Nancy Reagan. I mean, this is a person whos stuck in the '80s, and in some instances, stuck in the 50s. And so, it's not just about the war on drugs. Its a kind of a retro view of law enforcement and policing in which hes attempting to wipe out the last 30 years of progress in this country, to the extent that its been madethe last four years, in particular, where weve really been focused on the issue of policing reform. And you talked about Ferguson and the uprising and whats happened. This intense look at unconstitutional policing, this is what Jeff Sessions doesnt want to deal with. He talks about a few bad apples. Hes not interested in looking at issues of systemic problems in the police department.

But, you know, the statute that governs these investigations and consent decrees, like in Baltimore, is called the Law Enforcement Misconduct Statute, 42 U.S.C. 14141. It was enacted actually as part of the 1994 crime bill as a result of the Rodney King assault and the acquittal of those officers in the first trial. Thats a statute that authorizes the attorney general to investigate unconstitutional policing, to engage in these consent decrees. So, to the extent that hes a law-and-order attorney general, this is a law hes willing to completely ignore.

In Baltimore, what hes attempted to do is essentially to undermine a consent decree that had been entered in January, had been negotiated over the course of six months by the city of Baltimore and by the Department of Justice. As soon as he came into office, Jeff Sessions immediately tried to begin slow walking approval of the consent decree. Even up to last week, the day before there was to be a public hearing, when the community was to come before the federal judge and explain to him what they wanted to see in the consent decree, Jeff Sessions filed a motion asking for a 90-day extension for the judge to review the decree. The judge approved the decree. And even then, Jeff Sessions released a statement essentially criticizing the decree, saying he thinks it will make people in Baltimore less safe.

We tried to intervene in the case, because we believe the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions has no intention of fully enforcing the decree. The judge did not allow us to intervene, basically said its too early, that he assumes that the Department of Justice will enforce the decree. I hope hes right. I think we have enough reason to believe that Jeff Sessions has no intention of actually enforcing the consent decree that really will bring about transformative policing in Baltimore City. People in Baltimore have been waiting for this for years.

JUAN GONZLEZ: I dont think Ive ever seen, certainly not in my memory and in the memory of most people, such a complete about-face of a federal

SHERRILYN IFILL: Yes.

JUAN GONZLEZ: of a federal institution versus what the policy was in December and November of last year to what it is now, and the impact on so many of these cities, that already have these decrees, in terms of the fact that the Justice Department has a responsibility to enforce them. Im wondering what youre thinking whats going to happen?

SHERRILYN IFILL: Its actually quite astonishing. I mean, he ordered this review of 14 consent decrees. So were talking about Ferguson. Were talking about Cleveland. Were talking about places all over the country, in which police departments themselves have gotten on board with the idea of transformation. You know, when I met with Jeff Sessionsand I met with himI said to him, "Do you actually talk to local police? Because the chief of police in Baltimore will tell you out of his mouth he wants the consent decree." Even the head of the FOP said at their most recent labor summit in Las Vegas

AMY GOODMAN: The Fraternal Order of Police.

SHERRILYN IFILL: The Fraternal Order of Policesaid consent decrees bring resources to police departments. If you talk to police chiefswe work with the International Association of Chiefs of Policethey know that this is a moment when reform has to happen, that there does have to be 21st century policing. And so, I questioned Jeff Sessions, "I understand you have your own views, but do you talk to police?" The man who was just confirmed as Jeff Sessions deputy, Rod Rosensteinhes the former U.S. attorney from Baltimorejust a week before I met with Attorney General Sessions, had indicted seven Baltimore police officers for racketeering from the elite gun unitpolice officers who were shaking down residents of the community. I told this to Jeff Sessions. Hes got his own worldview. And he came in with that worldview, and no fact is going to shake that view.

AMY GOODMAN: What did Sessions say to you? What did he respond?

SHERRILYN IFILL: Well, so, besides calling me articulate, he essentially said, "Well, maybe Baltimore has some problems." But as you can see, it had no effect on him, because hes come forward with an effort to try to scuttle the decree.

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Jeff Sessions Pushes New War on Drugs While Killing Obama-Era ... - Democracy Now!

Looks like the War on Drugs is back. The Washington Post reported Sunday that the new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is preparing a return to the same hardline strategies that have so spectacularly failed to reduce drug use since 1971. Indeed, the nation has spent more than a trillion dollars, made itself the biggest jailer on the planet and yet seen the use, availability and quality of drugs rise like a rocket from a launch pad while the cost dropped like a watermelon from a skyscraper.

Thats why it was welcome news when President Obama quietly dismantled much of the machinery of the drug war. His Department of Justice radically scaled back federal involvement in so-called civil asset forfeitures, a program wherein police confiscate your cash and require you to prove its not drug money before you can get it back.

The Obama Justice Department looked the other way as states liberalized marijuana laws. It also extended clemency to incarcerated nonviolent drug offenders and declined to seek harsh mandatory minimum sentences for the ones facing trial.

It made sense, so it couldnt last. Back in February, Donald Trump himself announced that there would be a new drug war and it would be ruthless. Leaving aside that the old drug war was hardly ice cream and roses, there is no reason to believe being more ruthless will help.

After all, you can be beheaded for drug-related offenses in Saudi Arabia. Yet the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that in 2008 the most recent year for which statistics seem to be available the Saudis seized 12.8 tons of amphetamines.

So much for the effectiveness of being ruthless.

There is a reason the 18th Amendment, the one outlawing liquor, was the only one ever repealed: Prohibition doesnt work. You cannot arrest people out of wanting what is bad for them. But as weve seen with liquor and tobacco, you might be able to educate, legislate and persuade them into wanting it less.

Diane Goldstein, a retired lieutenant commander with the Redondo Beach (California) Police Department, calls the new drug war a horrible idea. Goldstein is an executive board member of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a group of law enforcement veterans who think that in asking police to solve a medical problem, weve made a costly mistake.

She cites a 1994 Rand Corp. study that said using health care strategies to combat drugs returns seven times the value for every dollar spent on it to the taxpayer. Shouldnt we be looking at what is not just cost-effective, but also returns better results for people who are impacted by chronic substance abuse?

Problem is, that wouldnt allow some of us to brag how ruthless they are.

African-Americans, who have been locked up at obscene rates, even though whites are the nations biggest users and sellers of drugs, should regard this new war as a clear and present danger.

Pot users of all colors in states where marijuana is now legal should feel the same; from now on, the feds will no longer be looking the other way.

They, and anyone else who is appalled by this, should tell that to the attorney general.

Youll find an online contact form at: https://www.justice.gov/doj/webform/your-message-department-justice.

The DOJ comment line is: (202) 353-1555. The main switchboard is: (202) 514-2000.

And heres the street address: U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20530-0001.

However you register your opinion, please do. Weve already had a War on Drugs.

And one was more than enough.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for The Miami Herald. He can be contacted at:

[emailprotected]

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Leonard Pitts: The new federal 'War on Drugs' will be just as ineffective as the last one - Press Herald

Published: Apr 11, 2017, 8:59 am Updated: Apr 11, 2017, 9:47 am

By Sadie Gurman, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON For three decades, America got tough on crime.

Police used aggressive tactics and arrest rates soared. Small-time drug cases clogged the courts. Vigorous gun prosecutions sent young men away from their communities and to faraway prisons for long terms.

But as crime rates dropped since 2000, enforcement policies changed. Even conservative lawmakers sought to reduce mandatory minimum sentences and to lower prison populations, and law enforcement shifted to new models that emphasized community partnerships over mass arrests.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions often reflects fondly on the tough enforcement strategies of decades ago and sees todays comparatively low crime rates as a sign they worked. He is preparing to revive some of those practices even as some involved in criminal justice during that period have come to believe those approaches went too far, for too long.

In many ways with this administration we are rolling back, said David Baugh, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the 1970s and 1980s before becoming a defense lawyer in Richmond, Virginia. We are implementing plans that have been proven not to work.

Sessions, who cut his teeth as a federal prosecutor in Mobile, Alabama, at the height of the drug war, favors strict enforcement of drug laws and mandatory minimum sentences. He says a recent spike in violence in some cities shows the need for more aggressive work. The Justice Department said there wont be a repeat of past problems.

The field of criminal justice has advanced leaps and bounds in the past several decades, spokesman Ian Prior said. It is not our intention to simply jettison every lesson learned from previous administrations.

Sessions took another step back from recent practices when the Justice Department announced last week that it might back away from federal agreements that force cities to agree to major policing overhauls. His concern is that such deals might conflict with his crime-fighting agenda.

Consent decrees were a staple of the Obama administrations efforts to change troubled departments, but Sessions has said those agreements can unfairly malign an entire police force. He has advanced the unproven theory that heavy scrutiny of police in recent years has made officers less aggressive, leading to a rise in crime in Chicago and other cities.

Its the latest worry for civil rights activists fretting about a return to the kind of aggressive policing that grew out of the drug war, when officers were encouraged to make large numbers of stops, searches and arrests, including for minor offenses. That technique is increasingly seen as more of a strain on police-community relationships than an effective way to deter crime, said Ronal Serpas, former police chief in New Orleans. He was a young officer in the 1980s when crack cocaine ravaged some communities.

Officers orders were simple, Serpas said: Go arrest everybody. We had no idea what the answers were, he said. Those of us who were on the front line of that era of policing have learned there are far more effective ways to arrest repeat, violent offenders, versus arresting a lot of people. Thats what we have learned over the last 30 years.

In a recent memo calling for aggressive prosecution of violent crime, Sessions told the nations federal prosecutors that he soon would provide more guidance on how they should prosecute all criminal cases.

Sessions approach is embodied in his encouraging cities to send certain gun cases to tougher federal courts, where the penalties are more severe than in state courts, and defendants are often sent out of state to serve their terms.

He credits one such program, Project Exile, with slowing murders in Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1990s. Its pioneer was FBI Director James Comey, who was then the lead federal prosecutor in the area.

In the community, billboards and ads warned anyone caught with an illegal gun faced harsh punishment. Homicides fell more than 30 percent in the first year in Richmond, and other cities adopted similar approaches.

But studies reached mixed conclusions about its long-term success. Defense lawyers such as Baugh said the program disproportionately hurt the black community by putting gun suspects in front of mostly white federal juries, as opposed to state juries drawn from predominantly black Richmond jury pools that might be more sympathetic to black defendants.

They took a lot of young African-American men and took them off the streets and out of their communities and homes and placed them in federal prison, said Robert Wagner, a federal public defender in Richmond.

Baugh argued the program was unconstitutional after a client was arrested for gun and marijuana possession during a traffic stop. He lost the argument, but a judge who revealed 90 percent of Project Exile defendants were black also shared concerns about the initiative.

Sessions has acknowledged the need to be sensitive to racial disparities, but has also said, When you fight crime, you have to fight it where it is if its focused fairly and objectively on dangerous criminals, then youre doing the right thing.

During the drug war, sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine crimes were seen as unfairly punishing black defendants. Sessions in 2010 co-sponsored legislation that reduced that disparity. But he later opposed bipartisan criminal justice overhaul efforts, warning that eliminating mandatory minimum sentences weakens the ability of law enforcement to protect the public.

My vision of a smart way to do this is, lets take that arrest, lets hammer that criminal whos distributing drugs that have been imported in our country, Sessions said in a recent speech to law enforcement officials.

The rhetoric sounds familiar to Mark Osler, who worked as a federal prosecutor in Detroit in the late 1990s, when possessing 5 grams of crack cocaine brought an automatic five-year prison sentence. Osler said he came onto the job expecting to go after international drug trafficking rings but instead we were locking up 18-year-old kids selling a small amount of crack, and pretending it was an international trafficker.

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Sessions' ambition to revive old-school war on drugs dismays veterans of that war - The Cannabist

Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pennsylvania, will be President Trumps drug czar, according to a report from CBS News. Marinos congressional voting record is that of a hard-liner on marijuana issues, and he recently said hed like to put nonviolent drug offenders in some sort of hospital-slash-prison.

As drug czar, Marino would oversee the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a branch of the White House that advises the president on drug policy issues. More than anything else, the office sets the tone of an administrations drug policy. Under President Barack Obama, for instance, the office quite publicly retired the phrase war on drugs, preferring rhetoric centered more on public health than criminal justice.

Whether that approach continues is something of an open question. Former drug czars from a more militant drug policy era have been publicly agitating to bring back the war on drugs. Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is moving to put criminal justice back at the forefront of drug policy.

Marino appears to be in that camp as well, but his views are unlikely to influence the administrations policy in the same ways Sessions views do. Thats because the drug czars office has traditionally played a limited role in setting policy instead, it coordinates drug control strategy and funding across the federal government.

Still, with the selection of Marino, another piece of Trumps drug control strategy falls into place. In Congress, Marino voted multiple times against a bipartisan measure to prevent the Justice Department from going after state-legal medical marijuana businesses. (The measure ultimately passed.)

Similarly, he voted against a measure to allow Veterans Affairs doctors to recommend medical marijuana to their patients, as well as against a separate measure to loosen federal restrictions on hemp, a non-psychoactive variant of the cannabis plant with potential industrial applications.

Those votes place Marino well to the right of dozens of his Republican House colleagues who supported the measures. He also voted against a measure that would loosen some restrictions on CBD oil, a non-psychoactive derivative of the cannabis plant that holds promise for treating severe forms of childhood epilepsy.

Asked about marijuana legalization last fall, Marino told a reporter that the only way I would agree to consider legalizing marijuana is if we had a really in depth-medical scientific study. If it does help people one way or another, then produce it in pill form. But, he added, I think its a states rights issue.

As a congressman, Marino called for a national program of mandatory inpatient substance abuse treatment for nonviolent drug offenders. One treatment option I have advocated for years would be placing non-dealer, nonviolent drug abusers in a secured hospital-type setting under the constant care of health professionals, he said at a hearing last year.

Once the person agrees to plead guilty to possession, he or she will be placed in an intensive treatment program until experts determine that they should be released under intense supervision, Marino explained. If this is accomplished, then the charges are dropped against that person. The charges are only filed to have an incentive for that person to enter the hospital-slash-prison, if you want to call it.

Forced inpatient treatment in a hospital-slash-prison would presumably include drug users who are not necessarily drug abusers. Only about 21 percent of current marijuana users meet diagnostic criteria for abuse or dependence, for instance. The other 79 percent do not need treatment for their drug use.

Marino acknowledged that implementing such a policy nationwide would take a lot of money.

Whether hell push for such a strategy as drug czar remains an open question. Beyond that, the offices track record on meeting its drug policy goals is not the greatest. In 2010, the office set a series of ambitious goals to reduce overall drug use, overdoses and drugged-driving incidents. A 2015 Government Accountability Office report concluded that it failed to meet any of them.

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Reported new White House drug czar aligned with 'war on drugs' backers - Bangor Daily News

Middle East Eye

How the 'War on Drugs' sabotages the 'War on Terror' Middle East Eye Ultimately, all of this only further confirms the self-defeating nature of the war on drugs. One doesn't need an advanced degree in economics to understand how the principle of supply-demand dictates market forces. The criminalisation of drugs ...

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How the 'War on Drugs' sabotages the 'War on Terror' - Middle East Eye